"Jacklighting"

January 27, 2020

French artist Anne-Charlotte Finel presents Jacklighting at The Chimney for her first solo show in the US. Referring to the nocturnal hunting practice of shining bright lights throughout dark fields in order to momentarily stun animals, Jacklighting proves itself both weird and wonderful. Finel's work, focused on spaces affected by unnatural lighting systems, is composed of four reels. And with each video being manipulated both digitally and physically, the story from viewer to viewer may be rather ambiguous.

In Triste Champignonniste (Sad Mushroom Farmer), 2017, Finel films a mushroom farm in a former underground gypsum quarry—although it may look more like the ground for a nuclear bomb shelter as bursting shapes and foggy landscapes are cast upon a pink velvet backdrop. Only upon closer inspection may one gradually discern the actual rotting of elements played upon the deteriorating pixels of the film for a versatile look on decomposition.

As is the case with all of the show’s remaining components, nothing is quite as it seems in Jacklighting. The rhythm of the subjects and the landscapes of the environment speak to the title’s permanent state through the relationship between man and nature, attesting to Finel’s expertise in observing the unordinary and inclination to search for truth in the otherwise vastly unseen.