Tayloe Piggott Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of select films and editions by artist Jeffrey Blondes. Dedicated to capturing the observable, but often overlooked changes pulsating within the natural world, Blondes creates high definition videos and printed film-still editions that showcase the subtle effects of time and weather, as well as human and planetary activity on the landscape. An artist reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition will be held Wednesday, August 29th from 6-8pm. All are invited to attend.
Jeffrey Blondes is an American born artist who has lived in France for over thirty years. Since 1990, his work has focused on natural cycles in the landscape and the perception of time. Each film is created with a particular conceptual, observational or technical objective. The shooting schedules and locations frequently are 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. For Blondes, time calculations and camera mechanics are key elements of his process. He might pan a single camera across a landscape from sunrise to sunset, use an imperceptible zoom that changes from macro to wide-angle over 15 hours, or position two cameras back-to-back to capture a 360-degree experience of an environment over a year. One of the pieces included in the exhibition - Wyoming 3 x 180 - is a study of texture within an intimate landscape, shot in three identical sweeping 180° arcs over several seasons. 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 a Blondes film evokes a mindful response, as the viewer connects with the slow rhythm of nature.
A practice of patient observation underpins Blondes’ work irrespective of medium. He began his artistic exploration as a photographer. After moving to Paris from New York, his first exhibition (1984) featured Polaroid based collages sandwiched in layers of fragmented glass. A propensity for working from life led him in 1991 to start to paint, draw and print monotypes en plein-air. His landscape paintings and works on paper were shown in over 35 solo exhibitions worldwide. Since 2005, Blondes’ films have come to define his artistic vision. The similarities between the intense focus of plein-air painting and long-take filming connect these different mediums and express his intent to capture a finite, intimate experience of the landscape. Blondes’ films accomplish this objective by creating a silent, contemplative bond with the viewer. The impact of Blondes’ work arises from his ability to illuminate nature’s shape-shifting transformations in a manner that seduces the viewer to stop and realign their pace to the slow tempo of the subject.
Like the best photographs, Blondes frames his camera shot to arrest and capture the viewer’s gaze. The framed, typically vertical screen evoke window - yet the landscape refuses to shift with the movement of the head. At a glance, the image often appears still. However, should the viewer return for a second look, their memory of the image is challenged. Within just a few minutes, the effects of light and weather can radically transform the scene. A Blondes film is a meditation – the antithesis of an immersive interactive, live feed or time-lapse experience. Its power comes from the immutable pace of nature, and the inherent suspense of anticipation. Blondes created his first video project when he painted and filmed a tree on the bank of a pond for one hour each week, over a year. The initial objective was to replicate the intense gaze he as a painter focused on a subject, and to encourage the viewer to observe minute shifts in light that transpired over an hour and subsequently 52 hours across four seasons.
In a similar spirit, Blondes 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; John Hopkins, Baltimore, MD and St. Thomas Hospital, London, UK.
