Page Ar38, February 27, 2005

Guns and Ghosts: the movie-editing program Avid, and then After Sarah Winchester's husband The Winchester Witch Project relayed from the computer onto DVD's. died of tuberculosis, a spiritualist told her By Steven Henry Madoff "Fluidity describes the feel of my that she was being haunted by angry work, the way I put things together," Mr. shooting victims, who had taken her The house that Blake, 33, said on a recent visit to New husband in revenge. She was told to move repeating rifles built York. Tall, with uncombed brown hair, a West, build a house and keep on building inspires a haunting set few days' beard and aviator glasses, he sat rooms to confuse the ghosts and keep of plasma ‘paintings.’ by a glowing plasma screen at the gallery them at bay. Amazingly, with a burden of of his Chelsea dealer, Feigen guilt worthy of Lady Macbeth, she did it. She bought the house in San Jose and JEREMY BLAKE took on its renovation as a restless, THE WINCHESTER TRILOGY creative and unending task for her literal San Francisco . salvation, a way of living that seemed like Through August. another compelling symbol to Mr. Blake: what it means to be an artist. For the last three years, Jeremy Blake has "Jeremy's early work was so seductive been looking at ghosts. Blending that while it was praised, some thought it paintings, photographs, film, music and was maybe too beautiful, too nice," said sound on banks of computers, he makes Benjamin Weil, the curator who his spirits flit and hover like spectral organized the Winchester exhibition in stalkers. Then they disappear into a real- San Francisco. "But the newer works are life towering mansion, the locus of a more relentless, more layered and trilogy of artworks with the feel of a lush disturbing. They seduce you with that yet troubled dream. The mansion, 340 miles north of Mr. Blake's studio in Santa Monica, Calif., is A sequence from the Winchester Mystery House in San “The Winchester Trilogy,” left, Jose; a Disneyesque attraction with 160 is called “Century 21,” a 12-minute rooms, mazes of hallways, dead-end DVD with sound. To the rattle of staircases and doors that open an old movie projection, sepia bewilderingly onto blank walls. Yet for photographs of the creepy Winchester house appear on the the artist, the 19th-century house, built screen and morph into gun- over nearly 40 years by the widowed toting cowboys. heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, is more than a dizzying distraction for tourists. It's an icon of violence and beauty and then turn to their real subjects: America's romance with guns in the Wild, violence, power and fear." Wild West, a fascination that won't go Courtesy of the artist and Feigen Contemporary, The trilogy's sections–"Winchester," away. "The Winchester Trilogy," three Contemporary. "1906" and "Century 21"–have a uneasy pieces by Mr. Blake that just went "I'm using the tools available today," deepening sense of tumult and struggle. on view at the San Francisco Museum of he continued. "The fluidity of information As the sound of an old movie projector Modern Art, takes that subject head on in rushing from every direction, and the way rattles, sepia photographs of the works of real complexity. we process it, define our culture now. Winchester house appear on the screen He calls his pieces "time-based And Sarah Winchester interested me and morph into Morris Louis-ish floral paintings," suggesting that they move as because the jumbled free flow of the abstractions, which then change into gun- time passes. And they do move slowly house she built seemed like an toting cowboys. In the second segment, and hauntingly, on large-scale plasma architectural metaphor, a 3-D symbol named for the year of the big earthquake screens. Yet technically they aren't films for that fluidity." that shook California, the low lights and or videos. (The museum calls them "Then there's the psychological aspect slow film shot with a hand-held camera mixed-media digital animations.) They of the place," he added, "the neurosis and take on the feeling of "The Blair Witch are an utterly 21st-century art form, a mad logic and creativity all flowing Project" on Quaaludes— something hallucinatory bitstream of data that is together in this crazy quilt of rooms. It ominous just out of view unfolding in the fabricated in Photoshop, After Effects and gets unbelievably twisted." dark. The cracks in the house embody the Mr. Blake’s work has only become more cracks in Mrs. Winchester's mind. visible as part of a growing wave of what In the trilogy's last section, Mr. might be called entertainment-based art. Blake's camera floats over to the Century Such artists as Doug Aitken, Eve 21 movie complex near the mansion, Sussman and Paul Pfeiffer are using suggesting that movies have so increasingly sophisticated means to mythologized the gun-slinging machismo borrow and twist the sleek look of of the American West that the allure of Hollywood for their own highly personal, violence is driven ever deeper into our poetic and sometimes political ends. psyches. “Jeremy’s mix of abstraction Movies are a touchstone for Mr. and narrative, of painting and the cut-and- Blake's art. "When you make paintings paste structure of films, obviously and then you watch beautiful shot after borrows from the movies,” said Klaus shot in a movie, there's this kind of envy," Biesenbach, the chief curator at P.S. 1 in he said. "I mean, I tried to make abstract , who selected Mr. Blake for that paintings as a student, but I just couldn't museum’s “Greater New York” make that party happen, so I went in the exhibition in 2000. “But it’s entirely direction of film. I wanted to get the something else. It was immediately emotion of abstract painting some other innovative. I already see it being way, give it some juice by making it influential on younger artists.” move, make it unstable, and then do Yet Mr. Blake balks at the word something like add sound to disorient entertainment. “I’m hitting these two people and say to the viewer: 'Keep worlds, art and entertainment, against watching, keep watching. Something's each other,” he said. “I’m not making a going to happen.' " neutral mirror for our complex culture. Something did happen for Mr. I’m using the means of movies and Blake when , the paintings to seduce people, to pull them director of the movies "Boogie Nights" in and open things up.” He leaned and “Magnolia,” wandered through the forward in his chair. “Then we’ll see what show “010101: Art in Technological happens.” Times” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2001 on a break from making “Punch-Drunk Love.” He was captivated by two big plasma screens of glacially moving abstract and architectural forms, their colors emotionally hot and cool. They were Mr. Blake’s pieces “Liquid Villa” and “Guccinam.” He invited the artist to make new work for the movie, writing three places into the script where the art’s rainbow-rich abstractions flow between scenes – three mini-exhibitions with millions of people watching. The experience had a powerful influence. “What I heard most from P.T. was about manipulating time,” Mr. Blake said. “P.T. thinks in sixteenths of a second. He gets this incredible emotional punch layering those moments – fast, shifting, fluid. My work was a little formal before. Then I understood those quick little shocks wouldn’t kill my painterliness, they’d add to it. That changed my art.” After appearances in back-to- back Whitney biennials in 2002 and 2004,