Originally shot in super 8, these four, very short sequence shots each evoke colour and painting in their own ways, while questioning the medium of film. These close-up and almost intimate shots focus on the artist’s hands, which manipulate coloured elements. In the first shot, the artist presents opposing dynamics. As he holds an egg timer in one hand, with its blue sand running out, in the other hand he holds a thermometer, whose red indicator goes from an ice-cold temperature, to boiling. This spectacular display is a cinematic illusion, with no basis in reality. We find this game of mystification again in the third sequence, in which Baldessari reproduces the magic of the miracle of Christ transforming water into wine, then back into water. This magic show parodies religion as much as the veracity of the filmed document. In the second sequence, Baldessari holds two small disks with portraits à la Warhol. He successively turns each disk over to reveal a mirrored surface that dazzles the camera. This small gesture reduces the history of cinema to a dazzling and hypnotic interplay of lights and actresses. In the last shot, he successively plunges his thumbs into recipients full of green and yellow pigment. The volatile pigment flies away and creates random traces on the white background, composing a painting. In this parodic reference to abstract expressionism, the pictorial gesture is reduced to the use of the thumb.

Patricia Maincent
Translated by Anna Knight