Seeing While Seeing: Jeffrey Wells

I live on a boat, so the shimmering lights, disconnected shadows and glimmers of reflections that are among the subtle projections in the Seeing While Seeing project by artist Jeffrey Wells at the Santa Monica Museum of Art seem almost familiar. Despite the solid cement floor, rigid walls and metallic wiring that help make up the small museum gallery at Bergamot Station, you nevertheless experience a slight feeling of motion, of airiness, of something just a bit discomfiting. In one corner, for example, what should be a straight vertical line where two walls meet instead shimmers and undulates. But stare at it, and the line becomes rigid again. Looking at the paintings on the wall, you suddenly see shadows forming within the painting. Or do you? The slight alterations of the space through projected light shake one's sense of grounded certainty. However, where other artists may make this experience very physical and visceral, often through large-scale immersive projections, the alterations instigated by Wells remain far less overt, with the result that their disruptions affect optical perception. You question your vision, and the layering of separate experiences of vision through time. Overall, the project elegantly shifts attention from the art object to the space of the gallery itself, and from there, to the foundation of the artwork as concept and situation. But gently, without a lot of hoopla. The result is both pleasing and philosophically intriguing.