mfa.jernelsen.comJer Nelsen

Artwork Commercial TEACHING CV About Menu Artwork Commercial TEACHING CV About Ghost Spaces (2018-2022) Austrian architect Victor Gruen imagined the shopping mall as a shared retail utopia: a centralized location for advanced capitalism to function at its highest efficiency. Between 2019 and 2022, an estimated 25% of all shopping malls will close their doors, leaving what architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas called deactivated ‘junkspace’. Ghost Spaces serves to present and archive these modern ruins through vibrant, detailed large format photographs of the spaces which defined the capitalistic ideal of the late 20th century. The collection of images from across America are an inquest into the function shopping malls: their decline serving as evidence of a changing consumer. Mediocris Mediocris stems from my curiosity of collective memory. Using pop culture and the archive as source material, I have distilled down films to a single frame by averaging out every frame of each movie. The resulting abstractions are both reminiscent and foreign, descriptive and vague, simultaneously containing every state of existence the film holds and behaving as a still frame waiting for closer inspection. All images are available as NFTs. Each NFT represents ownership of a print of the work (limited to one plus an artist print). At any point, the owner of the NFT may choose to exchange the token for the physical print. Other conditions may apply. To view or purchase, visit https://opensea.io/luxhominum A Bug’s Life (1998) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" A Knight’s Tale (2001) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" A New Hope (1977) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" Beauty and the Beast (1991) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Chariots of Fire (1981) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Cinderella (1950) Digital Chromagenic Print, 38" x 44" Dirty Dancing (1987) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Finding Nemo (2003) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Jurassic Park (1993) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Les Misérables (2012) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" The Monuments Men (2014) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" Nacho Libre (2006) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" The Princess Bride (1987) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Sleepless in Seattle (1993) Digital Chromagenic Print, 28" x 44" The King and I (1956) Digital Chromagenic Print, 23.3" x 44" The Pink Panther (2006) Digital Chromagenic Print, 34" x 44" Ad Infinitum (2016 + 2023) 96 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Ad Infinitum is a space for an alternate, overlooked version of the sublime than conventionally appears in art historical narratives. Unlike the raucous, terror-laden sublime of Burke and Kant which puts human in a position of power over nature through use of our agency of experience, this contemplarary sublime” arises among whispers in quiet spaces of reflection and is a step removed from the nature-bound modern sublime of immediacy purported Barnett Newman. The three art-objects that comprise Ad Infinitum usher in this contemplarary sublime” through a proxy; they function as wormholes, creating meditative spaces that give a view into a metaphysical, hypercartesian dimension. Through this sort of looking-glass, the three light-based art-objects and their environments situate a viewer to more readily see beyond themselves, quietly cognizant of infinity and somehow strengthened by its lack of limit. I have had, at junctions, what I would describe as metaphysical, sublime experiences. These experiences were beyond my definition and beyond the scope of my understandingunexplainable, unquantifiable, and irrational. These experiences have bolstered and shaped my system of belief and are reflected, though not representationally, within the trinity art-objects, collectively titled Ad Infinitum, which in latin means to infinity . I position my work within an art historical, philosophical, and scientific context, namely as the work relates to Hans Haacke, a hyper-rational artist and his work with closed microsystems, which he called event containers”. My art-objects take their form from Haacke’s early work, but subvert the original ideastrading his closed systems for open systems and his natural fascination with the observable world for suprasensibility and metaphysics. As a note: Ad Infinitum also finds itself curiously scratching at the corners of current astrophysical and quantum mechanical notions of time, space, and our perception of reality. It is my intent these new ideas and possibilities within the work will both diversify and bolster the Barthesian ‘aura’ with which the work operates, allowing for a space of contemplation where the viewer starts at zero and tends to infinity. Sublimis Deus, 2016 Polycarbonate, two-way privacy film, fiber optic cable, light, 46 cm x 46 cm Lux Hominum Lux Hominum Aurea Lux (2016) Silver/Gold mylar sheet, fishing line, lead weights, oscillating fan, dimensions variable Aurea Lux (2016) Silver/Gold mylar sheet, fishing line, lead weights, oscillating fan, dimensions variable Aurea Lux (2016) - Detail Silver/Gold mylar sheet, fishing line, lead weights, oscillating fan, dimensions variable Aurea Lux, 2016 Silver/Gold mylar sheet, fishing line, lead weights, oscillating fan, dimensions variable Interconnection (2016) Iron-56 is the razor’s edge when it comes to nuclear reactivity. The most common isotope of iron divides elements between a bias of fission reactions, where heavier atoms split into smaller atoms, releasing massive amounts of energy, or lighter atoms, which undergo fusion within high heat and high density. Fission is responsible for early atomic weaponry and most nuclear power today. It relies on destruction and decomposition to create staggering amounts of energy, producing large volumes of radioactive material in the process. Fission is not a naturally occurring process. Conversely, fusion combines lighter atoms. Fusion creates 3-4 times as much energy as fission, but requires a dramatic amount of energy to set a reaction into motion. Fusion is responsible for hydrogen bombs, and is optimistically looked at as being one of our great hopes for clean, sustainable energy in the future. Fusion occurs naturally at the heart of stars. On Either side of Iron-56 60" x 40" Archival Dye Pigment Print Every star in the Southern Hemisphere connected to every other star 44" x 44" Archival Dye Pigment Print Every star in the Southern Hemisphere connected to every other star Detail Every star in the Southern Hemisphere connected to every other star Detail Every star in the Southern Hemisphere connected to every other star Detail Eternity is in Love with the Productions of Time (2016) Time and Eternity are two abstract concepts which seem entangled and discrete. Eternity is in Love with the Productions of Time is visceral, temporal, and in constant flux. Three 4’x8’ sheets of gold and silver mylar hang vertically: suspended over two-way silver mylar filled with human breath. The work is shown in tandem with six-channel audio of aural representations extraterrestrial information: gravitational waves, radio, microwave, and electromagnetic radiation, etc. The audio slips out of real-time and is resampled exponentially. The title of the work, drawn from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , opens the intersection of science, art, and spirituality found within metacognitive questions of the infinite. The work functions as a wormhole - inhabiting the space between the infinite and the temporal, the transcendent and the imminent, the physical and the metaphysical. Eternity is in Love with the Productions of Time 48" x 96" x 96" Human breath, gold/silver mylar sheets, silver mylar tape, six-channel audio Eternity is...