THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Ken Johnson
Published in The New York Times, Art in Review; Ann Lislegaard Bellona (After Samuel R. Delany), nov.11, 2005
Murray Guy
453 West 17th Street, Chelsea
Through Dec. 3
Ann Lislegaard's moody, trippy and visually and philosophically seductive video animation "Bellona (After Samuel R. Delany)" was shown in the Danish pavilion of last summer's Venice Biennale. A Norwegian who lives in Copenhagen and New York, Ms. Lislegaard is also included in "Ecstasy - In and Around Altered States" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the must-see contemporary theme show of the moment.
"Bellona," projected onto a wall-size panel that is slightly skewed in the gallery, presents a slow, mesmerizing tour through a series of simplified, empty rooms, with windows and doors looking into other empty rooms. Some are dark, but most are illuminated by hanging globe lights and dyed in the ravishingly rich hues of 60's-style Color Field paintings. Twice during the course of the 11-minute loop, a woman's voice intones plaintive words from Samuel R. Delany's science fiction novel "Dhalgren." It concerns the extra-planetary city of Bellona, where it seems as if the walls keep changing direction so that the city becomes "like a great maze - forever adjustable and therefore unlearnable."
That architectural instability is reflected in the film by swinging doors and walls, changing colors, shifting transparencies and a constantly revolving point of view, which all challenge our ability to map the whole cognitively. That, in turn, becomes a metaphor about living in a world in which few truths seem to remain stable for very long.
1 Below image; Empty rooms in Ann Lislegaard's 3D animation
|
