James Coleman at Marian Goodman - Brief Article

Art in America, May, 2000 by Eleanor Heartney

The pair of works shown by Irish artist James Coleman explore peculiarities of perception and representation. In the front gallery, Untitled: Philippe VACHER (1990) literally slowed time to a crawl. The basis of the piece is a 4-second clip of film that has been stretched to 17 minutes by filming each frame for 13 seconds. It features a French actor, famous for his portrayals of doctors, who appears to be slipping into unconsciousness in an infirmary. The viewer sees a series of still images that give a jerky representation of the man's movement as his head falls toward the table at which he sits. He catches himself and turns to look at us. As the action progresses, the scene gradually goes from full color to black and white.

The film is enigmatic--and one has plenty of time to ponder its meaning in the long pauses between frame changes. One point seems to be our own transformation from observers to participants when the actor turns to regard us. Another seems to be the artifice of the whole filmic operation. The protracted transitions from frame to frame suggest how much is left out when film runs at the normal speed, and one begins to contemplate what might be happening invisibly in the spaces between the frames. The artifice is further accentuated by the leaching of color and, at least for filmgoers who recognize him, by the presence of the actor in his characteristic role.

The second work, Photograph (1998-99), is much less minimal, but it seems to serve a similar purpose. Slides shown on three screens create a sort of narrative about a group of children who don carnivalesque makeup and costumes in preparation for some kind of school pageant. Their melancholy expressions are at odds with the theatrical gaiety of their attire. The work is accompanied by an audio component in which sentimental Victorian poetry is read in a breathy childish voice. The text has to do with passions held in check and then released, with emotional alienation and the longing for metaphysical freedom. It is full of portentous phrases--"I could have poured out words in that still air," "I had yet to fly"--that embody a sophomoric notion of grand emotion.

Again, there is a growing sense of the artifice of the whole operation, both in the children's studied poses and in the gushy emotionalism of the soundtrack. But if both works are essays in artifice, they are also, in different ways, tests of the viewer's endurance. Coleman deliberately eschews the emotional seduction natural to the film medium. He replaces it with intellectual rewards, but viewers of these seemingly endless works may find themselves asking if the exchange was really worthwhile.