September 16 through November 11, 2001

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is proud to present Jessica Bronson/MATRIX 194 heaps, layers, and curls, a new project commissioned for the MATRIX Program for Contemporary art. The installation – a three-screen, mural sized video projection – will open at the museum on Sunday, September 16.

Bronson is known for her video installations, monitor works, and single-channel videotapes which address different genres of film and video, and the ways viewers relate to each of these time-based media. Interested in the construction and history of film, Bronson uses appropriated footage as well as film and video images that she shoots on location.

Her video installations – often incorporating a number of large screens in a variety of shapes and sizes – are intended to confront the viewer in a number of ways. One of Bronson's goals is to create a sort of media-induced hypnotic state – what the layman might call "zoning out" – which Bronson sees as meditative and possibly even transcendent.

Bronson's site-specific MATRIX installation – a three-screen, mural-scale video projection – reflects her interests in landscape painting, photography, structuralist cinema, special effects, sound art, and science fiction. What the viewer sees at first is video of cloud formations. But what Bronson addresses is humankind's manipulation of nature – from changing weather patterns to genetic engineering. In Bronson's video the clouds are digitally altered so that they morph into unnatural shapes at accelerated speeds. As with many of her previous installations, the soundtrack provides a narrative to an otherwise non-narrative work – in this instance the viewer hears recordings of voice transmissions from NASA mission control, and from the cockpit of a space shuttle in orbit.

Bronson has had one person exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she was the second recipient of the Citibank Emerging Artist Award; the Institute for Visual Arts, Milwaukee; and was included in the Let's Entertain exhibition at the Walker Art Center. Bronson studied biochemistry before becoming an artist, and received her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Public Programs
Artists' Talk
Sunday, September 16, 3:00 p.m.
Jessica Bronson and British conceptual artist Ceal Floyer will each discussion their MATRIX exhibitions running concurrently at the BAM/PFA. Bronson will consider her work in the context of her interests in structuralist film, the genre of classical cinema, Minimalist sculpture, and the poetics of video language.

Gallery Talk
Thursday, October 25, 12:15 p.m.
In her curatorial walkthrough of Jessica Bronson and Ceal Floyer's MATRIX installations, Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson will explore the artists' relation to their respective influences and creative context.

Bronson at New Langton Arts
In conjunction with her MATRIX exhibition, Bronson will also be showing work at New Langton Arts in San Francisco. Selections from the Video Art for the Bar Series will be on view at New Langton Arts from September 12 through October 13. Originally conceived for exhibition in a bar, the three videos – "Jessica Bronson and the Dick Slessig Combo Present for Your Pleasure … ", "GO-GODARD," and "Approach … a shot to the green" – draw upon popular media forms such as the music video to investigate a culture saturated with soundbytes, advertising, and Attention Deficit Disorder. For more information visit the gallery's website at www.newlangtonarts.org.