Viewers are surrounded by rapidly moving images of wildlife and nature.
A young deer walks across the screen, through high snow, its dark coat stark against the winter landscape. The animal takes a few more steps before its outline blurs, leaving a kaleidoscope of ghosted afterimages in its wake. In the blink of an eye, the screen flickers dark, and the deer is gone.
This roughly 30-second clip is just one of the many poetic video fragments that make up the understory, Madison-based artist Chele Isaac’s first solo show at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, which will be at the museum’s State Street Gallery through Nov. 12.
Billed as a film-based installation, Isaac’s work is more accurately described as an immersive sensory experience. The 20-minute piece weaves together video segments depicting lush natural landscapes and vibrant wildlife over an evocative original soundtrack by Jack Kellogg.
What makes the understory so novel is its presentation. Each of the show’s screens is attached to its own wall segment, measuring a towering 11.5 feet tall. Sleek, black and imposing, the pieces are arranged in a circle in the center of the gallery floor, leaving a small space for viewers to enter.
The viewing device Isaac uses in the understory wasn’t something she had to craft herself; it came from Milwaukee’s Discovery World, a science and technology museum. “It was for an exhibition that was discontinued, and then they actually just posted it on Craigslist for free,” says Isaac.
As visitors enter the monolithic space, they are engulfed by a lush, energetic visual world. There is no recognizable narrative, and almost no human presence in the clips. But the work embodies an aura of wonder and quiet spirituality.
Sweeping flocks of birds careen against an electric blue sky. A deciduous forest shimmers in warm sunlight. A single match flashes across each screen. We are witness to a series of closeups of ice formations. Through images like this, the understory manufactures an exciting new world.
For Isaac, who received an MFA in sculpture from UW-Madison in 2008 after co-founding a graphic design company in Chicago, the installation emerged from a collection of shorter, visceral pieces, which she deftly stitched together. Its fractured nature is a departure from many of Isaac’s other locally and internationally displayed multimedia work (including her ethereal installation The End of Angels, a piece that appeared in MMoCA’s 2013 Wisconsin Triennial). “So much of this work comes from my b-roll; they’re things I’ve been archiving that didn’t have a place yet,” says Isaac. “The film is this mixture of shooting from the hip, and then trying to find the trail of how these things connect without forcing them.”
Isaac acknowledges that her work might be a challenge at first. It’s rare for the seven screens to display the same image, and viewers are physically unable to see every section of the installation at once.
Slowly though, an elegant purpose behind the composition unfurls.
Isaac’s advice is to take a step back. “I think it might initially be a frustration, not being able to take everything in, there’s no arc, there’s no payoff — these things that we’re used to seeing in movie images,” she explains. “I think all of us can rethink how we pay attention to the world. There are times we can just let it be, and that’s OK.”
