Chelsea Art Museum's blog

The Chelsea ArtMuseum, Home of the Miotte Foundation, is pleased to present Jenny Marketou: Lighter Than Fiction. What do you see when soaring over Los Alamos, New Mexico... utopia or dystopia? Alandscape of natural beauty or a place where nature was unleashed in thecreation of the nuclear bomb? Jenny Marketou’svideo installation poses the question, juxtaposing dreamlike perspectives withdisturbing realities. These contrasting states are experienced in two singlechannel video projections that comprise the installation. “Bubbles” 2009 isbased on a public sculpture project that took place in Prague where the artistcreated a remarkable set of 14-meter banners with her original graphiccomposition using the word “Fragile” which were draped onto an airballoon.  Marketou filmed as she and her guests riding the balloonexperienced breathtaking views and the dream-like sensation of floating withthe wind currents, hovering above the busy pace and anxieties of city life. “Levelsof Disturbance” is structured around the aerial audio and visual recordingsthat Marketou captured while flying in a small jet over the natural landscapearound Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atomic bomb was created in the 1940s,that is still contaminated by nuclear waste and turbulent human emotions.During editing Marketou destroyed the order of the video sequence and thecoherence of the narrative, placing at the center of each frame a round sphere animatedin a perpetual motion that controls and obstructs access to the full image ofthe landscape. The viewer is drawn into this unsettling spinning sensation,generating metaphors for the human condition. Marketou investigates theprecarious balance between reality and fiction capturing the view from abovewhere the lightness of utopian sensations and imagery are contrasted bydystopian realities. 

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