TEMP/ERATURE
TEMP/ORARY
TEMP/LATE
TEMP/O
{ABOUT}
Kelly Nipper
at David Petersen
Sophia Chai
framed collage
8 1/2 x 13.75 in.
The first work one encounters upon entering the gallery in this quiet neighborhood in south Minneapolis is Tessa Pattern Travel Journal (rotary), 2013-2024, a photo collage of a darkroom revolving door with a drawing of the circular structure. The spatial conceit of the exhibition, inside a room, is anchored from an architectural feature commonly found in community darkrooms, a relic from the analog photography era, where the steady rumble of the door turning announces to whomever inside the darkroom of a person entering. Next to this collage work, is an introduction that quickly sets up the tone of this exhibition, that begins with the words, “MY NAME IS TESSA PATTERN.”
adhesive wall graphic
60 1/2 x 40 inches
The text continues further as black capital letters on the lavender backdrop in the configuration of five large figure-sized printed vinyl affixed to the gallery wall. The text acts as a prompt of a sort for a narrative that invites us to enter into a room — that is specific and opaque at the same time, like watching a child’s play. It’s also akin to the experience of entering a darkroom where you have to trust your memory and sense of touch in moving around the room as you carry out the task of handling the light-sensitive materials before they go through the chemical process of stabilizing the images onto the emulsion layer. The process of seeing the images imprinted on the light-sensitive materials necessitates that information be kept sealed and unseen. Much like the journey Orpheus must take without looking back. Because the moment you turn and shine on the light, the image will have already disappeared forever.
installation view
In addition to the wall text, the works in the exhibition are arranged in a clockwise sequence. Interspersed among the wall text are the 3 large framed color photographs. A female figure dressed in opaque tights and a camisole, all in teal color, performs the task of holding up a large black screen in the constructed stage made of black boards. Smaller works of collage and drawings are diagrams that map out a choreography and stage elements for a performance that illustrates a visual field and a dark cylinder of a darkroom door. Also, a wall is installed with wallpaper of repeating patterns of enlarged poinsettias.
installation view
In looking at the large photographs of the woman dressed all in teal, the opposite on the color spectrum from the lavender, the color of the backdrop of the text, a photograph by Jeff Wall, Housekeeping, from 1986 comes to mind. In speaking about this work, Wall noted how the cleaning woman would hold her body differently depending on whether she had cleaned the room or not. The activity that had taken place before the camera shutter clicked was somehow registered in the body posture of the woman exiting the hotel room, so whether the labor of cleaning actually took place or not somehow played a role in whether the picture worked or not. Somehow the moment of exit by the cleaning person, after erasing all the traces of having been there, would feel differently depending on whether that activity of erasure had actually taken place or not. In this way, a photograph could show beyond what the image captured at the precise moment it pointed toward.
framed pigment print
60 3/4 x 41 1/2 in.
installation view
In the photographs in this exhibition, however, that sense of time feels forever suspended, as though time itself stood still in this black room constructed of black boards. A space, perhaps, for an anonymous storage/archive. Here, future, past, and present all have become merged into a new reality — “WHERE TIME IS STOPPED AND COUNTED”.