Angela Bulloch

Schipper & Krome, Berlin
Through November 18

BLOW_UP TV is the latest work in the ‘Prototypes’ (2000) series by Angela Bulloch – an artist of Canadian origin currently living in Berlin. Consisting of five “pixel box” columns, the work is best viewed from the gallery courtyard at night. The colored light emanating from the columns–pale green, yellow, pink, violet–alternate at one-second intervals, in a sequence regulated by computers installed at the base of each tower, following an RGB system (redgreenblue).

In this piece, Bulloch relinquishes her normal method – in which she creates an interactive relationship with her public – and adopts one of digital quotation. At first glance, the visitor might think these ‘pixel boxes’ are merely elegant, hyper-cool lighting systems. In reality, however, they are subtle allusions to Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult film Blow Up (1966).

The lights vary according to a well-established order that takes its inspiration from a sequence in Blow Up, in which the main character, half hidden behind a tree, photographs a couple in a park. On developing the photos later, he notices something strange behind the couple. By repeatedly enlarging the image, he discovers evidence of a crime happening only a few meters from the couple. Far from providing firm evidence of the crime, however, blowing up the background scene renders it less and less distinct and, subsequently, of dubious interpretation.

Bulloch, drawing on this concept and the problems of depicting reality in the technological era, digitally reworks a dozen single frames from the film. Taking images from the sequence where the main character hides behind the tree, she reduces the resolution – number of pixels per square unit – until it is completely unrecognizable.

The film stills become large, digitally reworked, jigsaw puzzle squares, reproduced at one-second intervals on the ‘pixel boxes’. Their titles, There was; a beautiful; light; in the park; today are, in turn, quotes from the film. Bulloch’s procedure emphasizes how limited technology is as a tool for reproducing reality. But the end result, a product of excessive quotation, is ‘cerebral’.




Marina Sorbello
Translation by Rosalind Furness