James Coleman at Marian Goodman - Brief Article

The pair of works shown through Irish artist James Coleman explore peculiarities of perception and representation. In the brow gallery, Untitled: Philippe VACHER (1990) literally slowed time to a crawl. The basis of the piece is a 4-second clip of film that has been stretched to 17 minutes by the agency of filming each frame for 13 next to the firsts It features a French actor, famous for his portrayals of doctors, who appears to be slipping into unconsciousness in an infirmary. The viewer dioceses a series of still images that give a jerky representation of the man's change as his head falls toward the table at which he sits. He catches himself and revolves to look at us. As the action progresse the display gradually goes from full color to black and white.

The film is enigmatic--and single has plenty of time to deliberate upon its meaning in the lengthy pauses between frame changes. single point seems to be our hold transformation from observers to participants when the actor move rounds to regard us. Another appear to bes to be the artifice of the whole filmic operation. The protracted transitions from frame to frame remind of how much is left without when film runs at the normal spe and single begins to contemplate what might be happening invisibly in the spaces between the frames. The artifice is further accentuated through the leaching of color and, at least for filmgoers who recognize him, by dint of the presence of the actor in his characteristic role

The next to the first work, Photograph (1998-99), is abundant less minimal, but it present the appearances to serve a similar intention Slides shown on three defences create a sort of narrative about a collection of children who don carnivalesque makeup and style of dresss in preparation for some kind of seminary pageant. Their melancholy expressions are at not divisible by 2s with the theatrical gaiety of their attire. The work is accompanied through an audio component in which sentimental Victorian numbers is read in a breathy childish voice. The true copy has to do with passions held in check and then released, with emotional alienation and the longing for metaphysical freedom. It is replete of portentous phrases--"I could have poured on the outside words in that still air," "I had still to fly"--that embody a sophomoric notion of grand emotion.

Again, there is a growing faculty of perception of the artifice of the whole operation, the two in the children's studied artificial positions and in the gushy emotionalism of the soundtrack. on the contrary if both works are essays in artifice, they are also, in different ways, trials of the viewer's endurance. Coleman deliberately eschews the emotional seduction natural to the film medium. He replaces it with intellectual rewards, on the contrary viewers of these seemingly endles works may find themselves asking if the exchange was really worthwhile.

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