Kelly Nipper

Kelly Nipper was born in Edina, Minnesota in 1971. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

On the occasion of her second solo exhibition at galleria francesca kaufmann, Kelly Nipper presents a four channel video installation entitled Bending Water into a Heart Shape, previewed on the occasion of the show Girls’ Night Out at the Orange County Musueum, California. The works of Kelly Nipper are part of major international private and museum collections such as The MCA of Chicago, the OCMA of Newport Beach, California, The Israel Museum in New York and the Los Angeles MOCA.

The four channel video piece will be projected and installed on monitors. The monitors will show two videos made at a figure-skating training centre, each shot from opposite sides of a rotating turntable set in the centre of the rink. In its glacial appearance these videos act as a clock, moving clockwise, relentlessly repeating the same visual information. The two videos also suggest the field of vision of a pair of spinning skaters.

The third video, which will be projected, features a dancer moving in slow motion through the movements of a counterrevolution figure-skating jump known as the Lutz. Standing on the floor of a studio, encapsulated in an infinite white landscape, the dancer attempts to stretch the movement out to sixty minutes. Counterrevolution jumps such as the Lutz are characterized by the skater gliding into the jump in the opposite direction to which he/she will rotate in the air. The revolutions take place in a counter-clockwise rotation. The abstract, isolating and stark nature of this video recall the history of avant-garde theatre, pausing at Japanese theatre, Butoh in particular. The fourth video, which will also be projected, shot against a sky blue backdrop, features a spiral mobile composed of wire and teardrop shapes made of ice. The video shows the teardrops melting, which slowly throws the mobile out of balance. As its weight and shape change, it destructs and disappears.

If at the roots of this piece lies the knowledge of terrifying concepts, those of the inability to rule oneself entirely, of inevitable failure, decay and subjection to exteriority, while times and spaces remain the same, and are inevitably the cause of such failings. The piece is composed so stylistically that the horror of such concepts is subdued.

Kelly Nipper's works are poetic studies of motion and perception. As a continuation of her earlier photography and installation work, Bending Water into a Heart Shape explores the elemental relationships and abstract experiences between the mind, time, body, space and nature. For further information or the request of visual material please contact the gallery

Kelly Nipper
Bending Water into a Heart Shape