Step into a hallway cloaked in shadow, and an alarm bell rings. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Nofziger has beautifully lighted the long hallway with lights that cast dappled shadows through pegboard, creating patterns that wheel over the walls.
Videos of old films are projected through thimble-size holes, small circles of light and imagery that flicker at different heights. There’s a 1927 film shot from the hood of a fire engine: People dash out of its way, and the bell beneath the eagle-shaped hood ornament swings back and forth. Another grainy image, higher up, shows birds swarming in the air, reminiscent of Hitchcock’s “The Birds.’’ These pieces are silent, and that silence pulls you in, although the imagery can be disturbing.
The environment, with its absorbing videos and shifting patterns, is contemplative, inviting you to draw into yourself. But all the old bells along the wall are motion-activated. Several might ring at once, and there’s no anticipating them. The word “tocsin’’ means an alarm sounded on a bell; it’s also defined as a warning or an omen.
For me, the different-sounding bells stirred several associations: fire alarms, old telephones, tolling church bells, the ring between classes in high school. “Tocsin’’ succeeds because it holds many moods in one place. It invites you in, and scares you, but still makes you want to stay.
Graceful experimentation
Raul Gonzalez has been an artist on the edge for a while, showing at venues such as the New England Gallery of Latin American Art in East Boston. This has been a breakout year for him. Gonzalez won a 2009 Artadia Award from a national nonprofit, and now he has an impressive solo show at a commercial gallery, Carroll and Sons.
