05 Mar 2010

Chelsea Art Museum, New York, presents 'Lighter Than Fiction' by Jenny Marketou

What do you see when soaring over Los Alamos, New Mexico... utopia or dystopia? A landscape of natural beauty or a place where nature was unleashed in the creation of the nuclear bomb?

Jenny Marketou's video installation poses the question, juxtaposing dreamlike perspectives with disturbing realities. These contrasting states are experienced in two single channel video projections that comprise the installation.

'Bubbles' (2009) is based on a public sculpture project that took place in Prague (Czech Republic) where the artist created a remarkable set of 14-meter banners with her original graphic composition using the word 'Fragile' which were draped onto an air balloon. Marketou filmed as she and her guests riding the balloon experienced breathtaking views and the dream-like sensation of floating with the wind currents, hovering above the busy pace and anxieties of city life.

'Levels of Disturbance' (2009) is structured around the aerial audio and visual recordings that Marketou captured while flying in a small jet over the natural landscape around 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 the coherence of the narrative, placing at the center of each frame a round sphere animated in a perpetual motion that controls and obstructs access to the full image of the landscape. The viewer is drawn into this unsettling spinning sensation, generating metaphors for the human condition.

'Lighter Than Fiction' investigates the precarious balance between reality and fiction capturing the view from above where the lightness of utopian sensations and imagery are contrasted by dystopian realities.

Meet-the-Artist: March 18, 2010, 6:30 PM
Jenny Marketou with Christine Paul, Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, Director of Media Studies Graduate Programs and Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School, NY

Jenny Marketou was born in Athens, Greece and since 1984 has lived and worked in New York. Marketou has been awarded grants and artists residencies worldwide and holds a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She has lectured extensively and has taught as an adjunct professor Photography and Interdisciplinary Studio Art at The Cooper Union School of Art and Science in New York City. She is the author of the book 'The Great Longing: The Greeks Immigrants of Astoria, Queens' Kedros Publishing. She has represented Greece at the Sao Paolo Biennial, Sao Paolo, Brazil and in Manifesta at Witte de With, Rotterdam.

Marketou's recent exhibitions include: A solo show 'Red Eyed Sky Walkers' (the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece); Le Grand Palais (Paris, France); Apex Art (New York, USA); Art in Odd Places (New York, USA); Fiacs 3rd Biennial International of Contemporary Art of Seville (Seville, Spain); Tina b Festival of Contemporary Art of Prague (Prague, Czech Republic); Pulse, International Art Fair (New York, USA); Anita Beckers Gallery (Frankfurt/Maine, Germany); ZKM, Media Center for Art and Technology (Karlsruhe, Germany); The Breeder Gallery (Athens, Greece); Museum Abteiberg (Moenchengladbach, Germany); Strozzina Center of Contemporary Art, La Fondacione Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italy); Kunstverein Ludwigshafen (Ludwigshafen Mannheim, Germany).