From Parallax
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Large-scale video projections in gallery spaces often feel cold and uninviting. Bettina Hoffmann’s Parallax, a show of just two projections at Truck Gallery, however, is one of the most seductively absorbing exhibitions of the year.
The six video works are simply staged tableaux vivants that show groups of people frozen in mid-interaction. The videos are so hypnotic, it is hard to sustain a conversation and watch at the same time, for example, and it is easy to watch each of the short videos a few times over. Two key impulses come into play when viewing Hoffmann’s work: to construct a narrative from the scene and to figure out how the videos were created. Figuring everything out takes concentration and time. Plus, there’s an overwhelming sense that you might miss a sliver of her unfolding dread.
In La Ronde, a family is gathered around a table. They’re eating, but the food and drink are obviously props, and there isn’t much there to nibble on: a few cups of orange juice, a coffee pot with one cup, and a plate of wafer cookies. Their conversation is paused. A few tense glances are exchanged, a child rests with head slumped on hands. We’re left to fill in the blanks, but it’s definitely heavy. The camera twirls around this scene in a perfect circle without focusing directly on any of the figures. It’s like standing in front of someone who refuses to make eye contact.
Next, a girl wearing a red dress sits on the edge of a bed. Nearby, another woman faces her. As the camera swings around for another pass, more details emerge. There’s a vacuum cleaner, a couple of bags, a beer bottle on the table and clothes piled on one of the chairs. Wait — were there three figures or four? Is this a narrative that is frozen in time, or moving very, very slowly? There are also two men in the room, but they’re obscured — one because the camera swoops past at neck-level, so his face is out of the picture, and the other, who is posing with his eyes relaxed, almost closed.
There is something unsettling in the neutrality and lack of animation in the character’s faces in each of these short works. It is hard to read their emotions, but the impulse to extrapolate that something bad is happening is pervasive. It’s a train wreck in slow motion, so to speak. Has the time come for a big discussion, or has awful news just been delivered? The empty, ethereal soundtracks, like a Bright Eyes song right before it gets emotionally overwrought, that accompany Hoffmann’s scenes are also completely disquieting. They sound like a combination of wind reverberating in a hollow space and a painfully slow, barely audible vibration of a violin. It’s not unlike white noise, but as a replacement for the conversation and ambient noise that should be filling the room, this strained soundtrack is creepy.
Technically, the camera swivels around each scene from an angle that would be impossible to hand-hold, and each shot was completed in one take. The models hold perfectly still as if they are posing for an old-style photograph. Each tableau takes place in a sparse room with carefully laid props and an open door (some even have two open doors) and these details give a further sense that the rooms are meticulously purpose-built sets.
The second suite of videos, titled Décalage, focuses more closely on physical relationships. A woman lies on a bare concrete floor with her arms splayed out. Two female figures are standing above her, as the camera grazes over their legs, then breasts and up to their blank faces. The next two scenes each depict couples positioned on their beds, one person lying down and another sitting close but looking away from their partner. The camera objectifies their bodies more directly. The point of view here is doubled, with each side of the projection depicting the same scene from a different angle. Each point of view glides slowly over each figure. Despite the inexplicable weirdness between the characters, they are simultaneously concentrated and relaxed, impenetrable, and because of all this, their faces are fascinating.
Hoffmann’s use of cinematic devices and technical sleight of hand leave many questions to be filled in by the viewer. After the intense photographic glimpses of life in Hoffmann’s installation, almost all of them remain unanswered, and this is the key to her mastery.
