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Smartphones, televisions, advertising screens: moving images exert a hypnotic pull. Christy Groen (1991) is fascinated by this power. In her paintings and installations, she seeks to better understand this sense of enchantment by analysing and recreating its mechanisms. She experiments with analogue machines that, like screens, generate moving images. For this, Groen uses the same basic components found in standard devices, such as light and polarizing filters, but applies them in an entirely distinctive way. Earlier versions of these machines were made from cardboard and wood, emphasizing their analogue, handmade character. The machines she presents at Prospects, with their black casing, more closely resemble the industrial products that inspired them. As a result, the focus shifts away from the physical apparatus and towards the moving image itself.
Groen draws inspiration for these moving images from the way screens operate. From individual image fragments, forms and patterns emerge, sometimes developing into abstract landscapes and spaces, as if a virtual world were hidden behind the screen. Her interest lies not in representation, but in the process by which screens generate images, and the effect this has on the viewer. How do we experience a collection of primary-coloured pixels as fluid images spanning a full spectrum?
Groen’s images are hypnotic, yet slower and simpler than the visual stimuli that constantly surround us. They do not demand the viewer’s full attention, instead leaving room for thought, imagination and interpretation.
Written by Sarah van Binsbergen