Cristin Tierney Gallery

Planar Video Wall is Perfect for Digital Art in Retail Gallery

New York City gallery owner, Cristin Tierney is a believer in the digital art form. So much so, that her Chelsea-neighborhood gallery recently presented one of the most compelling examples of it in an exhibition by the well-known new media artist, Yorgo Alexopoulos. His work, called Transmigrations, was the first of its type to be executed on the new Planar® Mosaic™ architectural video wall.

"Planar Mosaic architectural video walls not only have extraordinary picture quality, but beautiful aesthetics as well," says Tierney. "These are attributes that really showcased the digital art and creativity such as Yorgo's, and also enhanced the appeal and the cutting-edge image of our gallery."

In the view of both Tierney and Alexopoulos, digital art expressed on a platform such as Mosaic represents the vanguard of how many creative professionals may soon be presenting their artistic visions. It also is expected to become a highly desirable medium for architects and designers, by virtue of how well it contributes to the creation of memorable spaces.

Mosaic Software Enables Creative Flexibility

For Alexopoulos, a primary appeal of the Planar Mosaic architectural video wall was the system software – called Planar Mosaic Project Designer™ – that first allowed him to make negative space part of the exhibition and envision the final piece as it was designed. Specifically, he could create the exhibition using just 24 of the 46-inch Mosaic LCD display tiles, filling the exhibit space without every display tile having to physically connect to each other. "Planar Mosaic display tiles resembled bricks through which the viewer could see images of the world outside. The spaces between them were integral to the composition as well, which added to the effect I wanted to achieve, and which appropriately filled the total space I wanted to occupy," Alexopoulos says.

Using the software and the positioning flexibility Planar Mosaic afforded, Alexopoulos was able to mount four separate groupings of tiles, with one or more tiles in three of the groups positioned to create a unique look. "Then taking advantage of the system's auto-scaling capabilities, I was assured the content I had selected for each display tile could be easily assigned to that display tile, the content for it would be properly scaled, and optimal image quality would be guaranteed. And not having to do all this scaling myself saved a great deal of time and enabled me to stay focused on achieving the total result I was aiming for with the exhibition."

Rock Solid Technology

Alexopoulos calls Planar Mosaic technology "rock solid". Examples of this, he said, include the system's off-board electronics design, which keeps noise and heat away from the LCD tile. He gives high marks to the system's menu features as well. "They make it very easy to achieve balanced colors, contrasts and tones, which is especially important where I needed consistency of one image across all 24 display tiles, or when a particular piece of content was to be shown on just one or two different panels. With the menus, I was able to achieve in minutes what would have required hours with other manufacturers' panels."

He also gave high marks to the Mosaic Mount™ as a solution that supports the installation of tiles in almost any desired orientation, including geometric, angular or dimensional arrays. The mount has auto-alignment posts that allow push-in, push-out simplicity, and spacing plates that gave Alexopoulos the ability to align all 24 Planar Mosaic display tiles easily and precisely, even considering the spaces between groups of panels.