Rebecca Erin Moran

Work:
498seconds, 2017. Salt, silver, sun; dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.

Venues:
Kling & Bang and throughout the Sequences venues

Primarily working in 16mm film, installation, and performance, Rebecca Erin Moran breaks apart the perceived narratives, components, and material properties of these media, dissolving structures so that they may be repeated without a definitive conclusion. Her play with duration is combined with an exploration of alternative uses for her chosen media: a performance may never seem to end; a film set may become a scene for the defeat of narrative; or the film strip may itself become the surface for the methodical removal of paint from a brush. Self-reflexive visual clues are often embedded within her works. A tumbleweed and a green screen may signify her interest in investigating the limits of real and represented time and questioning its perceived linearity.

With 498seconds, Moran follows her continued interest in the material properties of film as she paints with a film emulsion composed of salt and silver directly into the space of the gallery. A thin strip of emulsion the same thickness as a strip of film lines the pathway that one would take through the exhibition. As light comes through the windows, projecting into the space, the emulsion will slowly become exposed over the course of the exhibition, transforming from a creamy white to a deep grey. The areas where the sun shines most strongly into the space will thus be the darkest towards the end of the exhibition—charting the gallery’s solar exposure over the course of the show. The painted emulsion stripe becomes a type of map, recording the texture and patterns of the sunlight, reflected and refracted by the objects and people that move through the space. Moran will also paint shapes based on those made by the sun through windows on the surfaces of other Sequences venues. The title of the work refers to the amount of time that it takes for the sun to reach Reykjavik on the date of the exhibition’s opening and become absorbed by Moran’s emulsion.