Friday November 14, 2014
7-11 pm
Memories, dreams, and sleep are intertwined in Jim Riley’s four channel video installation To Sleep: Perchance to Dream.
The installation explores the concept of memory, and the interplay of past, present and future in a theory of time related to quantum physics. In our waking state we rarely perceive these alternative states of existence, but sleep may provide the equilibrium required to open up possibilities. The installation title is from the well-known soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Riley makes use of the circle, which suggests a periscope into parallel worlds and also recalls the concept of infinity. Riley’s use of slow motion creates a mysterious environment – recognized, but not completely known, as happens in a dream state. The installation is site-specific. The dream room incorporates minimalistic objects such as a bed, night stand etc. Objects are placed in a more sculptural approach than in a realistic, functional location. The door projection at the back of the installation implies a bathroom where mundane ritualistic behaviour such as brushing hair or shaving have existed in the space at previous times. the room is set up to suggest the presence of the dreamer. Clues as to the dreamer’s identity may be found throughout this sculptural video installation. Riley proposes that time is not a linear quality but an elastic process when memory is created. It fascinates him to see the human body or landscape in a different “time frame” than the one in which our eyes normally observe them.
Science has explained why the human mind processes some events in slow motion. If the event is new to us, part of the brain becomes more active, and lays down extra sets of memories. These memories function in a manner similar to the addition of more video frames per second. psychological studies indicate that the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe that it took. riley uses more video footage for each second in “real time” than would normally be needed, to urge the viewer to re-examine the mundane and to perceive it anew.
He loops the video imagery of a moment in time and it becomes never-ending. the use of time can create beauty and mystery that we overlook at normal speed. By utilizing the looping technique, riley hopes to encourage the viewer to set aside the more traditional, narrative “movie-making” approach to time, where there is a beginning, a middle and an end. this artwork deals more with an emotive narrative than one that is linear and literal.
Jim Riley is a Burlington, ON, based artist and independent curator. His art practice is a blend of documentary evidence, personal ideology, social commentary and artistic investigations. Riley’s present aesthetic investigations explore time and perceptual memory. His recent art practice involves public art and gallery video installations. He has exhibited his art for more than twenty-seven years in Canada and the US.
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