JEFFREY BLONDES

JEFFREY BLONDES

29 AUGUST — 6 OCTOBER 2018

JEFFREY BLONDES TIME-BASED HD FILMS PRINT EDITIONS

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY 62 SOUTH GLENWOOD STREET JACKSON HOLE WYOMING TEL 307 733 0555 TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM

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ARTIST JEFFREY BLONDES IN THE FIELD

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TIME-BASED HD FILMS

ETANG DE PEZIERES IV - 48 HOUR FILM, ed.

of 7, 2018

High definition (ProRes 422), 48 hour loop (detail above)

Filmed at each of the four seasons, the camera imperceptibly zooms over the course of the day from a macro view at sunrise of willow branches to a long view of the pond at sunset.

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LE BOIS DE MAMETZ - 24 HOUR FILM, ed. of 7, 2016

High definition (ProRes 422), 24 hour loop (detail above)

This 24-hour film was shot in two dawn to dusk takes, at the height of summer and midwinter. It begins at dawn on July 10th, 2016, one hundred years to the day of the 15th Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers’ sunrise attack on Mametz Wood during the Battle of the Somme.

The camera ascends the trunk of a tree from the ground to the sky. Tilting slowly and inexorably upward, it scans the length of the tree from its base to the canopy of leaves overhead. The camera then rotates in a circle, with a slow dissolve transitioning from summer to winter, when the tree has lost its leaves and its branches are bare. The camera then descends, recording the tree upside down, ending its journey at sunset focused on dead leaves at the base of the tree.

Conceived as a memorial to the wounded and dying, the film is shot from the vantage point of the soldier, first as he crawls through the leaves in the faint light of dawn, then, as the body slowly twists and tumbles backwards, eyes staring up at the flickering light filtering through the canopy of leaves. The film imagines the slow motion and ‘timelessness’ of the falling, fallen man, who in his last hours is left a vision of poetic beauty. A moment of incredible light before he closes his eyes.

This work is an homage to David Jones, author of In Parenthesis. Jones was wounded at the battle for Mametz Wood, but went on to a career as writer and painter. Among his most notable paintings is Vexilla Regis, 1947, the image of a tree uncannily similar to the subject of this film.

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WYOMING : 3 X 180° - 36 HOUR FILM , ed. of 7, 2014 High definition (ProRes HQ Full HD 1920 × 1080), 36 hour loop This film explores texture. Zoomed in, the camera pans three 180° sweeps across an intimate Wyoming landscape through the seasons.

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EAST

LE GRAND ETANG - 2 X 24 HOUR FILMS , ed. of 7, 2015 Real time. High definition (ProRes 422), 2 × 24 hour loops, two screens (detail above)

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WEST

La Brenne, located in France’s Region Centre, is a nature preserve, renowned for a lacework of ponds, rich wildlife population and misty, haunting light. In the 12th century, monks devised its system of interconnected ponds, to drain low-lying swampland in an attempt to eradicate malaria and develop arable land. Because of its isolation and dense vegetation, La Brenne has a mystical aura, and retains a historical reputation as a land inhabited by druids and witches.

Le Grand Etang, the 200-acre pond where Blondes filmed from August 2014 to July 2015, is emptied every 15 years so that banks can be rebuilt, and silt deposits removed. By midsummer, when filming began, it had transformed into an enormous field of grasses, flowers and crops. Water was slowly reintroduced in October, and gradually refilled the space until it became reestablished as an enormous pond.

Blondes filmed sunrise for one hour at the beginning of each month, and sunset for another at month’s end, using two cameras facing in opposite directions mounted on a rotating motor that turns 360 degrees in 24 hours. The result is two 24-hour films played as a diptych on adjacent screens - each encapsulating one year.

Two slowly rotating pans of the same segment of landscape shot at an interval of six months; so that one screen might show a field in August, and the other the same view in February once the pond refilled.

LE GRAND ETANG, EAST

LE GRAND ETANG, WEST

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PRINT EDITIONS

ETANG DE PEZIÈRES IV - 48 HOURS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2018

Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 78 ¾ × 55 inches (detail above)

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LE BOIS DE MAMETZ - 24 HOURS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2016

Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 39 ½ × 55 inches (detail)

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LE GRAND ETANG EAST - 24 HOURS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2015

Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 39 1/2 × 55 inches (detail above)

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LE GRAND ETANG WEST - 24 HOURS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2015

Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 39 1/2 × 55 inches (detail above)

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TREES AND SKY - 52 WEEKS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2009 Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 85 × 55 inches (detail above)

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TdeF - 24 HOURS X 60 MINUTES , ed. of 7, 2015 Digital Pigment Print on 315 g Rag (Bergger Fine Art Paper) 39 1/2 × 55 inches (detail above)

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JEFFREY BLONDES Jeffrey Blondes makes high definition videos and printed film-still editions that capture the observable, but often overlooked changes pulsating within the natural world. Since 1990, his work has focused on the subtle effects of natural cycles within landscapes as well as the perception of time. For Blondes, the delicate nuances of time and weather, as well as human and planetary activity on the landscape, have a powerful impact when placed inside, allowing the viewer to slow down and recognize the importance of the smallest movements that surround us every day.

Blondes creates each film with a particular conceptual, observational or technical objective. The shooting schedules and locations are frequently timed to record a seasonal or exceptional celestial event in a specific place. Other films are made more spontaneously over the course of a year, near his home in rural France.

The films are recorded without sound. However, the mesmerizing imagery can conjure the delicate rustle of aspen leaves or hushed snowfall in the viewer’s imagination. Observing the real-time progression of Blondes’ films each evoke a mindful response, as the viewer connects with the slow rhythm of nature.

A practice of patient observation underpins Blondes’ work irrespective of the medium. In this spirit, he makes printed editions from his videos. These static film stills capture the flow of time within a landscape in compressed form. The framed grids of color are adapted from films Blondes feels produce an arresting network of tones. Unlike the high definition films, the viewer does not have to wait to observe changes in the landscape. Rather, time is presented in a coherent frame. Blondes organizes the film image extracts in a system that represents each minute horizontally by every hour vertically. At a distance, the print appears as undulating hues. Up close, each frame sharply captures the elusive changes that occur from one minute to the next. A current of time flows across the stillness of the print as the viewer’s eye moves frame to frame reading it as text, or steps back to take in the full image as one might look at color and light reflected on the water.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1956, Blondes spent the first half of his life in the US. In 1981, he moved to France where he currently lives and works. The artist’s work is collected both publicly and privately.

Past exhibitions include the Centre d’Arts et de Nature, Chaumont-sur-Loire; Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris, France; Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, CT; Bitforms Gallery, New York, NY; David Findlay Jr. Contemporary, New York, NY; Metivier Gallery, Toronto, Canada; Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland; Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The Fine Art Society, London, UK; among others. He has completed commission work for a private collection, Wilson, WY; Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, Turkey; and Stanford Arts, Stanford, CA. Blondes artworks are exhibited in hospitals around the world including Memorial Sloan Kettering, New York, NY; Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD; and St. Thomas Hospital, London, UK.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition JEFFREY BLONDES 29 August - 6 October 2018 © 2018 All Rights Reserved

62 SOUTH GLENWOOD STREET JACKSON HOLE WYOMING TEL 307 733 0555 TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM