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10/1/2008

Jonah Groeneboer

Bellwether, New York

Jonah Groeneboer’s elegant string installations function as both three dimensional drawings and as stills in fourth dimensional narratives. Using the visual languages of the scientific, mathematic, and the mystical Groeneboer explores the metaphorical implications of the fourth dimension on perception, interpretation, and false dichotomies.

The Measure’s three string installations are created through interdependent tension relationships. The resulting effect is lines that define planes and create forms that appear to be solid 3D forms while remaining soft. The works that emerge collapse these dichotomies by unifying them.

The Measure takes its title from the problem presented by quantum physics whereby one is unable to simultaneously measure all the properties of a subject. One can measure both the speed and the position of a molecule but one cannot know its speed and position simultaneously. Long thought to be a complication of scientific objectivity, this act of measurement has been embraced by artists whose practices have been defined by exploring this complexity. The result of this measurement is not an objective conclusion but a metaphor about understanding and knowledge. Fourth dimensional thinking allows us to perceive our environment and ourselves as mutable entities.

The fourth dimension is the measure of time formalized. The introduction of time to the 3D object alters its properties. A solid fixed state becomes fluid. The essential and identifiable aspects of the entity are removed and ghosts of the object remain. The path of movement over time becomes the form and the object-ness becomes that which delineates the path—speed and shape. The form becomes the route and is no longer the object.

Fourth dimensional objects alter our understanding of object hood. A singular object infused with movement and time is a fourth dimensional object. The physicality of the 4-D object is essentially ghost-like—able to move through itself. The binary structure of interiority and exteriority set up in a 3-D model is collapsed in the fourth dimension. In the fourth dimension the space occupied by a threshold becomes a phase transition. The threshold is no longer a space of transition from one entity to another but a moment when the phase the entity is in shifts.

Groeneboer’s installations explore the points where perception and illusion reveal their symbiosis. The materiality of a line may first appear unclear, later revealing itself as shadow, string, or a carefully rendered graphite line. These aesthetic interventions in perception are one of the ways that the works act as visual amalgams of the shifting threshold.

“The Measure” is Jonah Groeneboer’s first solo exhibition. Groeneboer graduated with an MFA from New York University in 2007. He has been included in two group exhibitions at Bellwether and had an installation at the most recent Armory Show in New York.

Bellwether
134 Tenth Avenue - New York
Free admission

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