Jan Nel­son
Black Riv­er Run­ning #16

‘Black Riv­er Run­ning #16’ is the lat­est body of work by acclaimed mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Jan Nel­son. Known for her tech­ni­cal dex­ter­i­ty and abil­i­ty to cul­ti­vate a con­cep­tu­al medi­a­tion between hyper­re­al­i­ty and human vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, these new paint­ings fur­ther extend her inquiry into media cul­ture and ​‘opti­cal con­scious­ness’, ask­ing impor­tant ques­tions about the inor­di­nate pow­er of mass images to threat­en the authen­tic­i­ty of the real and to dis­tort history.

Often depict­ing social and polit­i­cal crises: immi­gra­tion and asy­lum seek­ing, Nel­son exam­ines notions of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and verisimil­i­tude. She ques­tions pri­mar­i­ly, how these mass images, which become a sub­li­ma­tion for the real, per­me­ate a type of paral­y­sis or de-sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the orig­i­nal con­tent. ​“It’s in this moment,” Nel­son explains, ​“where his­to­ry and time become dis­tort­ed. How do images trav­el through time? What traces of the orig­i­nal sen­ti­ment remain?”

Act­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly between the reg­is­ters of paint­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy, Nelson’s new evoca­tive depic­tions of the social cri­sis of refugees occu­py a momen­tary psy­cho­log­i­cal space of still­ness and a reflex­iv­i­ty between self and oth­er. Recall­ing her work Inter­na­tion­al Behav­iour, 2000, now in the col­lec­tion of the NGV, where she appro­pri­at­ed a pho­to­graph of Viet­namese refugees on Aus­tralian waters from the 1980s; in these sil­ver metal­lic paint­ings of the same sub­ject, Nelson’s chro­mat­ic inten­si­ty con­ceives both a men­ac­ing con­tem­pla­tion of sal­va­tion as well as a tran­scen­den­tal div­ina­tion. ​“I’m try­ing to con­vey the point where the image itself dis­ap­pears and reap­pears, oscil­lat­ing between con­ceal­ing and revealing.”

Equal­ly res­o­nant with melan­cholic despair, are Nelson’s painter­ly sculp­tures, porous objects made from linen, foam and epoxy paint, that artic­u­late a ten­sion between cre­ation and death. Nelson’s exper­i­men­ta­tions with cadences of both black and white, which func­tion as trans­po­si­tions of each oth­er, are sym­bol­ic of her ongo­ing research into human con­scious­ness and states of change.

Notably influ­enced by psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry, in par­tic­u­lar Jacques Lacan’s writ­ing on ​‘the real,’ as well as Jean Baudrillard’s con­cepts of ​‘sim­u­lacra’, Nel­son describes her inter­tex­tu­al prac­tice as ​“a lasagne com­post” or ​“a non-lin­ear struc­ture of oscil­lat­ing ele­men­tal propo­si­tions that cre­ate a series of signs for the view­er to use as a trace of resem­blances.” In this space, she delves deep­er into human per­cep­tion; encom­pass­ing human col­lec­tive mem­o­ry and the role that our visu­al cul­ture plays in con­struct­ing or manip­u­lat­ing these memories.

Nelson’s lay­ered prac­tice rep­re­sents frag­ments or com­pos­ites of the shape of human thought. For over two decades she has explored how the dig­i­tal world reshapes the human sub­ject. Qua­si per­for­ma­tive in nature, ​‘Black Riv­er Run­ning #16’ restages human rec­ol­lec­tions into sus­pend­ed moments; moments that cul­ti­vate dis­tance from the sub­ject and con­verse­ly, med­i­tate a new inti­ma­cy. These works con­front human dark­ness with con­tin­u­ing mys­tery, while effec­tive­ly ori­en­tat­ing the view­er into a tran­si­tion­al state; one between belief and reality.

Melis­sa Bian­ca Amore, 2024