Jocelyn Robert
Vermeer

1996

Combining modern technology and a stripped-down aesthetic, Jocelyn Robert transforms the power of small details into highly charged poetics. Vermeer is one example of this ability to underscore the uncanniness of the ordinary, and to shake up everyday experience. The laborious exercise of editing each of the video images in this work, using a digital editing program, is not unlike a weaver threading the loom one strand at a time. Robert uses a process that requires the artist to come in contact with each of the video fragments, i.e. one every 1/30 of a second, that contains an image of its own. Vermeer confronts the viewer with a slow-motion take on time, weaving temporality itself as its medium.