CHELE ISAAC

the understory at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art was installed within a freestanding, floor-to-ceiling, panoramic structure nearly 30’ in diameter. Referencing the 19th century cyclorama gallery in which viewers were meant to feel sublimated into massive 360º murals of distant lands, battles, and conquests, the understory encourages a more intimate immersion within interstitial moments, overlooked details, and tenuous connections that investigate the indifference of nature and ones relationship to our changing environment.

Instead of an unbroken sweep of cohesive, static imagery, the projections of the understory recall the portals of a spaceship or the periscope of a submarine, microscopic worlds and telescopic cosmos. The viewer is activated as both voyeur and voyageur as tableaus repeat, double, stutter and cycle through images of the natural world and  our contemporary existence. The film seeks to draw attention to the physical act of observing and the impulse to decipher a narrative. The circle of imagery exceeds one's peripheral vision so that time and chance become active elements and deny any one particular or repeatable experience or narrative.