{"id":1062,"date":"2009-09-15T12:16:20","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T19:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/09\/brendan_jansen_-_in_search_of\/"},"modified":"2009-09-15T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T19:16:20","slug":"brendan_jansen_-_in_search_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/09\/brendan_jansen_-_in_search_of.html","title":{"rendered":"Brendan Jansen – in search of a medium"},"content":{"rendered":"

At his opening at Crawl Space<\/a>, Brendan Jansen watched his baby  beam with Buddha calm and said, “In 15 years, he’ll wish I were dead.”<\/p>\n

\"brendanjansenbaby.jpg\"<\/span> <\/p>\n

He said it with certainty, but in Jansen’s videos, nothing is certain. Faces, skulls and land masses all have a bad case of the jitters, quivering from his assault on their form.
 
\"brendenjansenman.jpg\"<\/span>\"brendanjansenskull.jpg\"<\/span>
\"brendanjansenland.jpg\"<\/span>From Crawl Space:<\/p>\n

Jansen explores the space between premeditated experience and the choices that presuppose modes of depiction. As his title (No Chasm, No Cleft<\/i>) alludes — referring by way of negation to the location where ancient Greek oracles tapped into the unseen, mysterious, and infinite — Jansen is searching for new ways of conceiving or understanding the world by breaking down the photograph, the most prevalent archetype of representation in the present day.
\nAlthough the work in the show makes use of several photographic processes such as recording, scanning, slicing, editing and projecting, combined together in several unique techniques, Jansen captures not only the flat appearances of the picture plane but also structural information from multiple and fixed viewpoints. The work is also premised on the notion that how we choose to represent what engages us in the world is inextricably linked to how we understand our place in reference to it, conscious of the limitations of our points of view.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a chasm, of course, but it’s the uncertainty afflicting those who examine the unreliability of perception, a terra not firma.  In art, few subjects are as well trod. Jansen stakes a believable claim, even if he’s staking it in the wrong medium. <\/p>\n

He began as a painter working from photos but lost faith in his ability to undermine the solidity of their depictions. Hence, video, which is in hands is a dubious prospect. <\/p>\n

In the insistence of their flickering lights, his videos berate the audience with what it doesn’t know, which being an art audience, it knows already. Unlike Doug Aitken’s Electric Earth<\/i><\/a>, scoring on the same theme in 1999, Jansen’s videos are both painful and obvious. If they were just painful and offered something not done better elsewhere, that’s one thing, but painful and obvious is not worth the anti-pleasure price he’s asking.<\/p>\n

What works are the stills from the videos. He’s really a photographer, and video should be part of his process at arriving at his final product, a means to what could be his significant end.<\/p>\n

His self-portrait in chalk, which glows in the dark:<\/p>\n

\"brendanjansen2self.jpg\"<\/span>Through Oct. 11.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At his opening at Crawl Space, Brendan Jansen watched his baby  beam with Buddha calm and said, “In 15 years, he’ll wish I were dead.” He said it with certainty, but in Jansen’s videos, nothing is certain. Faces, skulls and land masses all have a bad case of the jitters, quivering from his assault on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1062\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}