blind eye, 1

2018
Video installation

Birches, standing in rows upon rows like soldiers, create a landscape similar to the one just outside the Lunder Center—visible through the windows to the left of Steinkamp’s panoramic installation. Exhibited for the first time at the Clark and inspired by its campus, Blind Eye unmoors the forest from the ground and the sky, slicing through the centers of the trees and forcing the viewer to gaze back into the dark, ever-open eyes on the pale birch trunks. As the leaves change color and fall from their branches, the bare, white trunks appear more clearly out of the darkness—a never-ending copse, receding in perpetuity. Steinkamp’s title came to her in a nightmare after a day of staring into the birches during the installation of this work at the Clark.

Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong

Jennifer Steinkamp (American, b. 1958), Blind Eye, 1, 2018. Video installation, 12’ x 43’ 2” (3.66 x 13.16 m)