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Nancy Fouts show extended until end of July. A must see. 52 Oakley Square, NW1

Review Jan 27 2010 « | »
Video artists Charly Nijensohn and Nova Paul at the Whitechapel Charly Nijenson and Nova Paul set the standard for 'Art in the Auditorium at the Whitechapel

Visually, aurally, technically these two films are completely different, as is their subject matter. Both are short, but utterly compelling.

In Dark Forest Storm Argentinian artist Charly Nijensohn reacts to the deforestation of the Amazon. Filmed on-site in a part of the rainforest ruined by human intervention, he presents an apocalyptic vision of a destroyed world. Nijensohn's first frame misleads us with a fairytale backdrop: clear water flows softly over sun-lit rocks, set to the sound of a delicate stream.

Suddenly thunder bellows and the screen is filled with a terrifying vision. Alone on a raft a man floats through a flooded forest of black, bare tree stumps. There is a vastness here - in his solitude, in the endless horizon, in the all-consuming Nature - that has echoes of the Romantic 'sublime'. It is reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

Death and foreboding pollute the air. Even Nijensohn's cinematography reflects the isolation and a sense of finality: no editing; each shot of film is self-contained. After a sequence of footage the screen goes black and in this abyss one hears the violent thunder, and then we see once again the loner on his raft.

The repetition of the black void is a representation of our willed blindness, our refusal to recognise that in the end we will be the architects of our own devastation. Friedrich's paintings symbolically portray mortality and despair, but rays of sun always allow for hope. Yet Nijensohn's vision is relentless in its bleakness. Rain pours from the sky, like an eternal grief.

Nova Paul's shots of domestic bliss, quaint suburban homes and cityscapes serve as an unsettling parallel with Nijensohn's depiction of man-made horror. Her 16mm film Pink and White Terraces is a compilation of moments in people's everyday lives.

Following in the footsteps of fellow New Zealander, Len Lye, famous for his experimental films of the 1930s, Paul plays with colour and light. Comprised of a series of static shots montaged on top of each other, the film shows different things happening simultaneously. The top layer is constructed using an optical technique, 'three-colour separation', so that people appear in translucent greens, reds and blues. Like ghosts, they pass seamlessly through each other.

Paul captures the ephemerality of life, as if in one instant she compounds an individual's past, present and future. Her characters don't engage with the camera. We watch them - like an Orwellian Big Brother - busying themselves apparently unawares.

Paired together, the films pose questions about individualism versus collective responsibility. After presenting footage of humans and civilisation, Paul's final shot is of a big solitary oak tree. What is the price of our progress and our indulgence, both artists seem to be asking.

I stepped into the Zilkha Auditorium just as Nova Paul's 10-minute Technicolour film Pink and White Terraces (2006) was about to start. Haunting music by sound artist Rachel Shearer filled the black screen before the title of the piece - Pink and White Terraces - floated down, first in green, then blue, and then red.

What follows is something akin to a Zen-like experience: images of everyday life gently succeed or superimpose one another in dreamy sequences of green, blue and red hues. Old friends chat on a porch on a hot summer day, a couple washes dishes together at night, a tree blows in the wind against a harsh sky, two children bounce on a trampoline. Suburban shots of homes with gardens and cars in the driveway are reiterated, as are market scenes in the city or the bustling of people in front of a diary shop.

Paul's film is made of a series of static shots where the same place or action has been recorded three times, imbuing each space with life. The moving images here are happy phantoms inhabiting domestic environments and public spaces of an unnamed city in New Zealand. Nothing really happens, but everything is animated, thriving with life. The translucent protagonists of the film remind us that every space is layered with past and present lives.

Charly Nijensohn'sThe Dead Forest (Storm) (2009) opens with the booming sounds of a torrential storm. The scene unfolds to show a lone figure standing on a log, floating in a flooded, barren forest during a storm. A sort of postmodern take on the German Romantics, here the lone man is trapped in the man-made nightmare of a destroyed rainforest, instead of experiencing the sublime in the beauty or force of nature.

The 4-minute film features repeated shots of the man. It is unclear whether he is in search of an escape in this post-apocalyptic landscape or whether he is patrolling the flooded forest in search of trees which might have survived. Possibly, he is the guardian of a cemetery which the Amazonian rainforest has now been reduced to. The interpretations are endless, but what is abundantly clear here is that the Argentine artist is pointing an accusatory finger at our involvement in the destruction of the rainforest.

Although both pieces are admittedly quite beautiful, they fail to move me or, at any rate, leave a substantial impression. The themes are too unoriginal to warrant such a monotonous and repetitive approach. One cannot help feeling a sense of 'so what else is new?' while watching the films. I leave from the now empty auditorium dissatisfied.

Charly Nijensohn and Nova Paul are at Whitechapel Gallery as part of the 'Art in the Auditorium' project until 18 April 2010.

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