David Baddley

A core element of film, stage production or music is narrative and the ability to create a story, and the fundamental element of narrative is time. Fine artists have also sought the narrative element in the image. More recently, time itself and the concept of temporality have become a broad source of conceptual subject matter for visual art, video installation and performance. Art that reflects the total absence of time is also compelling. This is something professor and professional photographer David Baddley has accomplished in his current video installation at Finch Lane Gallery.

The setting is a dark room with three large screens. On each is projected a video recording of a single fragmented portion of the Seine river in Paris (pictured), a location on the water with no peripheral physical boundaries, that Baddley chose to record at “Evening,” “Night” and “Morning.” All recordings are projected simultaneously, slowed to one-fifth speed. The result is three mesmerizing panels of light and color that have distinctive qualities and effects with sound of noises and voices that are never recognizable as such.

All definitive contexts have been removed for a pure experience of total abstraction in the cognitive framework of Baddley’s installation. Instead of conventional art attempting to replicate time to create a narrative, this abstracted expressive subject finds its own limitless freedom of meaning. While absent of identifiable contexts, it exists liberated from all sense of time. (Ehren Clark)