ART - SETH TYLER BLACK

UPCOMING SHOWS

Seth Tyler Black is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Beginning his art career in Buffalo, Black's work has exhibited in Chicago, New York City, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Mexico, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and other beautiful spaces. With work interdisciplinary in nature, Seth Tyler Black has cast himself in roles such as filmmaker, photographer, visual artist, installation loader, designer, writer, experimentalist, and performer.

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Starting out as a poet and writer for his hometown newspaper, Seth Tyler Black began his creative career in the cafes of a mid-size commuter town outside of Philadelphia. Being surrounded by coffee, talent, and opportunity, Black began having his poetry published as he performed out at multiple readings in multiple cities. That seed of value in the word pushed Black to begin experimenting more, utilizing his own queer gaze & love of aesthetic explanation, and finding more spaces for his expressions to be heard.

Rupture the Body [2011] : durational multimedia installation

Moving to, and finding home in, Buffalo, New York, Seth Tyler Black immersed himself while exhibiting in the seasoned arts community of the Queen City. Learning the ways of the media arts from experimental film pioneer and media artist Tony Conrad, Black went straight to experimenting with the interactions of light, the moving image, paint, sound, and the word. After a complete apartment flood where Black saved only a bag of clothing, his projector, computer, and canvases, Seth Tyler Black completed the proposal for his first large scale interdisciplinary environment which exhibited at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center's 2011 Artists & Models Affair [Rupture the Body: 2011]. Black toured Rupture the Body to five other venues in New York and Pennsylvania, while continuing to expand, produce, & perform other multimedia durational pieces.

Cycle of Life [2012] : experimental short film

Outside of Black's interdisciplinary, multimedia installation practice, Black continued to have works published, exhibit new intentional gallery pieces, and produce innovative experimental tellings of the intangible. In 2012, Seth Tyler Black montaged together a series of moving digital images into a 27-minute short film series titled Cycle of Life: a visceral depiction of the personal Cycle of Life [Birth through Rebirth & Death] told through color, movement, and repetition. Screening in totality at 3 different art festivals and 4 live film screening popups, and one of the parts [Addiction: 2012] screening at 2 film festivals in New York City and Mexico in 2012 and 2019 respectfully, Cycle of Life remains a landmark piece in Black's career with images being used throughout his projection and self-portrait work.

The Portraits [2020] : experimental short film

2013 was a year of collaboration creation. That marked the year that Black embarked on the voyage that was The Portraits. A triptych series of short films, The Portraits asserted an effort to visually describe the artist's process from struggled idea, to creation, to defining an output. The 43-minute short film that Seth Tyler Black produced is a beautiful collaboration of three well-defined artists in their own right: K Cornelius, Amy Taravella, and Black himself.

The first short of the triptych to be produced [A Portrait: A Dance: 2013] had the longest run to date, with splices and inserts from A Dance being intercut with both of the other pieces, A Portrait: A Dance screened at nine different venues & festivals between 2013 and 2019 with its most recent screening being at a dance arts festival in South Korea. A Portrait: A Dance depicts a dancer's struggle between passion and comfort as told in the final show movements of the dancer, Amy Taravella.

The first two parts of The Portraits [A Portrait: A Philosophy: 2019] [A Portrait: A Composition: 2020] were completed in 2019 and 2020 respectfully in the years leading to the Sars CoV-2 Pandemic, with images gathered on old 8-mm miniDV between 2013 & 2014, completing sound, by K Cornelius, and editing later in the decade. A Portrait: A Philosophy depicts an artist's struggle to come up with an idea to begin creating, despite having the will and means. A Composition depicts an artist's struggle to produce, despite having the will and drive to do so. A Philosophy screened in various venues and festivals both domestically & internationally throughout the pandemic. In total juxtaposition, The Portraits depicts the artist's journey from creation to output.

A Portrait: A Philosophy [2019] : experimental short film

A Portrait: A Composition [2020] : experimental short film

A Portrait: A Dance [2013] : experimental short film

Before Seth Tyler Black entered the film industry in 2014, he worked in the professional regional theatres of Buffalo, New York as both a scenic and projection designer. Throughout the early years, Black was the resident projection designer for the innovative performance group, New ALT Performance Group, at the ALT Theatre. There, Black was able to experiment more with projection and light as it interacts with performance, but this time not of his own movement. Throughout the residency season, Black was able to collaborate with the group on projections for both original shows [Ravings IV: 2011] [Understanding the Overtaken: 2012] [etc] & dances [Sweet Drip: 2012] [etc] as well as more traditional shows [Hedwig & the Angry Inch: 2012] using the projection light innovatively. Black also devised & performed a few multimedia performance pieces while he was a resident at the ALT Theatre. Seth Tyler Black's projection work with the ALT granted him other jobs as projection designer on several other theatre collectives' productions. In 2015, Black pulled from his previous work and created an interdisciplinary installation as the set for Songs for a New World while scenic designer for the production. The set played with the dichotomy of soft and hard installation with themes of water, release, and flow.

Songs for a New World [2015]: musical production

Throughout the years of both performance art and projection work, Seth Tyler Black exhibited his finer art pieces at various shows in numerous different venues, from CEPA Gallery to Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, from Big Orbit to Pineapple Co, RoCo and more. With an everlasting love for the art of the word, Seth Tyler Black continued to have his writings selected into festivals, being a runner-up in a few of the showcases. Black continued to write. Some of his work with the word includes getting some of his pieces published like The Time I Met My Jack Duluoz, A Portrait of a Young Artist, City., Light, and other essays in publications ranging from regional dispatches to the Dillydoun Review, to online blogs, magazines, and other publication outlets. Seth Tyler Black's penchant for writing strung all of his pieces and practices together as in a string theory.

A Portrait of a Young Artist [2011]: screenplay

The Time I Met My Jack Duluoz [2018]: novelette

City. [2019]: screenplay

In 2014, Black began to focus on his professional film industry career and his independent output slowed as he focused on achieving other successes in his life such as mastering being a prop master, designer, and art director. Seth Tyler Black's own work began to pick back up again in 2018/19 as he began to put his knowledge & experiences within the realms of love and the film industry into his work. With over a year off, and his professional industry work screeching to a near halt during the pandemic, Black's work and output shifted again to formulate and bottle up the liminal moments that both the individual and society were experiencing during those enigmatic days when the towers were falling. Seth Tyler Black is now, in his interdisciplinary work, continuing to define the world as he sees it while utilizing as many modes and mediums as necessary to depict the absolute correctness of a feeling or aesthetic.

You Can't Take It WIth You [2024]: play production

New York Fashion Week [2024]: runway design & projection installation

The Words Will Come [2024]: play production

After officially moving to Manhattan, Seth Tyler Black began integrating their previous 15 years of work into practice. During the WGA & SAG strikes, Seth Tyler Black took the theatre town by storm through booking 9 shows to open in the 2023/24 season, once again showing their work [putting art, and 15 years of work, at the forefront] as either the scenic or projection designer. Continuing on with work as an unrooted citizen, Black was chosen to inaugurate the Glass Box Theatre, a brand new theatre venue in Rochester, NY, on the campus of Rochester Institute of Technology with a three show residency doing projections. During 2024 New York Fashion Week, Black got the opportunity to do some projection installation and runway design for shoes at Grace Exhibition Space. Seth Tyler Black Black capped off the winter/spring 2023/24 season by returning to Buffalo to design projections for a World Premiere Play.