“It’s all done with mirrors.”
High desert-based artist Matt Elson is talking about his series of “Infinity Boxes.” They combine color, light and mirrors, creating a fun and immersive experience for anyone looking inside of them—and some them are on display at Imago Galleries, at 45450 Highway 74 in Palm Desert, through April.
Elson said he came up with the concept when he saw pieces of mirrors around in his then-workshop in Long Beach.
“I put these two pieces back-to-back. I saw reflections of me and my friend,” he said. “We started laughing. That’s when I decided to go with joy in my art, not darkness.” Elson said he enjoys seeing people having a great time looking into the boxes.
Since the creation of the first “Infinity Boxes” in 2012, they have been exhibited at museums, galleries, events and immersive-experience facilities in North America, Asia and Europe, reaching an audience of more than 7 million people, he said.
Elson, an award-winning computer graphics artist, trained as a painter at the Pratt Institute, earned his master’s degree in communications from the New York Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Executive Program.
Starting in 1982, he worked in the high end of 3-D computer graphics, working for Walt Disney Feature Animation, DreamWorks Animation, Magnet Interactive Studios, The Post Group LA, and Symbolics, Inc, a company that evolved out of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.
However, things started to change in 2004. “I was getting further off the art track and wanted to get back on,” he said. “I became part of a brain trust that was less and less creative and more and more managerial; it’s not what I was after. So I left Disney in 2004.”
Each box takes Elson between three weeks and a couple of months to complete. He said he’s motivated to make the boxes, because they all give people a chance to look at someone they know, or don’t know in a new, or different way.
Sculptor Cybele Rowe said about her experience facing Elson in one “Infinity Box”: “I felt self-conscious. I stuck my head in, and the colors burst forth like I was on a carnival ride. I was colorfully animated. My mind quickly bounced back to my childhood, and I was inside a big kaleidoscope, my favorite toy. … So many me’s were laughing. What a trip.”
In 2007, Elson started attending Burning Man, the annual event where 70,000-plus people from all over the globe gather in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada around Labor Day. The world’s biggest party is dedicated to community art, self-reliance and art expression. Elson said he’s motivated and energized by the event, calling it “wonderfully overwhelming.”
“It’s like old home week—meeting so many friends and colleagues. Just everywhere you turn, you find something that’s fun, inventive and interesting,” Elson said. “It’s not commercialism; it’s a place to show art and party.”
Learn more about Matt Elson at www.facebook.com/mattelsonart.