Jordan Wolfson, Untitled, 2007

    

      In this video, the components are moving images and audio. There is a voice over that discusses the history of American painting and its inability to become an accomplished fine art until it moved from representational painting that inaccurately tried to capture an American truth, into Abstract Expressionism. In direct opposition to the order of the ideas being presented in this audio critique, the video moves fluidly away from visual abstraction and into full representation.

     Initially the camera points towards the sky, capturing tree branches as they pass. Eventually, we see a close up of the screen of an early 1970s apple computer. We hear the sound of cars moving by the microphone and connect those sounds with the blurs moving across the screen. As the camera moves out in a slow zoom, we begin to see more of the scene in front of use representation becomes more and more clear.

                 In somewhat mirroring the audio commentary, wolfson begs us to draw a comparison between the two and to develop a meaning. The movement on his part from visual abstraction to visual clarity is in opposition to the audio commentary that describes a move from representation to pure to abstraction. In blurring these concepts, it appears as if Wolfson is commenting on the idea of accurate representation in mediums we’ve learned to understand to as devices of documentation.