French artist Laurent Grasso's "Les Oiseaux" ("The Birds") (2008) is an extraordinary video piece now showing in the St. Louis Art Museum's New Media Series.
The eight-minute projection has the camera trained on the pink sunset over Rome's skyline and a series of curious dark clouds floating across it. The clouds turn out to be hundreds of starlings flying in groups, their synchronized motions creating unexpected, even thrilling shape-shifting effects that are more beautiful than the built structures in the city below.
With this video, as in all his art, Grasso dazzles our eyes while inspiring us to look anew at the wonders of the everyday world.
Ivy Cooper, a professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, is the Beacon art critic.
This article originally appeared in the St. Louis Beacon.