Myopic Beauty-Recent Work by Jamie L. Disarno

Art Review by Laura Marjorie MacLean

In a recent piece Jamie L. Disarno projects ten slowly panning, highly unfocused video images within the darkened gallery space over the course of about eighteen minutes. Each segment transitions with a pronounced blink of total darkness. Disarno gives us clues as to what we are experiencing, we can understand qualities of light such as sunlight versus florescent light, and at times the colors give reference to the greens of plant life and the blues of the sky, or the dark tones of manufactured hard objects. It is the saturated colors of the images that serve to catch the viewer’s initial attention.

Disarno asks a lot from the viewer with this piece. She requires the audience to slow down and sit patiently for nearly twenty minutes, silently watching the slow progression of each image as it unfolds while realizing that they cannot quite gather a full comprehension of what is being presented. The piece does not offer any answers and the viewer is asked to accept this. This experience imparts conflicting reactions. One is a sense of tranquility and a childlike enjoyment of being one with the surrounding world, much like times spent laying in a field watching the clouds slowly roll past. At the same moment the adult brain struggles to place the image it is viewing and feels frustrated by the focal disability that has been imposed upon it. Over time the viewer slowly realizes that they are unable to clearly understand what is being shown and that it is best to relax into this state of unknowing. The experience of Disarno’s piece serves as a stark contrast to our blazingly fast paced information obsessed modern world.

This recent work is much improved from Disarno’s last piece done in a similar vein. Her previous incarnation was devoid of color and marooned in the middle of a shared gallery space. This most recent installation is located within its own small, darkened viewing room, which is an essential element of this work. The viewer needs the solitude of space to fully focus on and experience the moving images. One distraction to the current configuration is that the projector is directly in front of the viewer, breaking one’s focus and sight line. Perhaps if seating were provided the audience’s sight lines would be raised along with their overall comfort.

Disarno’s recent work offers a brief refuge to its audience from the toil of daily life. Rewarding those who persist with a moment to pause and to let go briefly of the need to constantly attempt discernment of every experience.