Nothing to see here, is a video installation created especially for the architectural space at Galleri Fimbul. From the covered up window panes facing the street to the innermost “chamber”, a spatial narrative is created by utilising the existing architecture to the full. Juell Kristensen’s interests lie in the audience’s physical experience of time and space and the possible expectations they carry when entering the gallery space. The formal methods used; the rhythm in the video pieces and the positioning of these in space, include the viewer in a fragmented narrative that questions the relationship between fiction and reality.
The installation at Galleri Fimbul refers to a sentence commonly used by policemen on TV and film: “Nothing to see here...” –usually followed by ”move along” or ”please disperse”. It is aimed at an unwanted audience at a crime scene but works against its intended purpose; the audience immediately understands that there is indeed something to see. With this Maren Juell Kristensen is investigating ambivalences in relation to the use of symbols and signs, and plays with the material context and the absent protagonist (what happened here?). The space of the Gallery is in this setting an important context on its own, since this is a space one does come to do just that - see.
Inspired by TV drama and film (amongst others Sunset boulevard/Billy Wilder and Strangers on a train/Alfred Hitchcock) Maren Juell Kristensen directly refers to popular culture and mass media in her work, our expectation for a structural narrative and dream that exits in this realm. Rituals, myths and fiction – the friction between reality and fiction in these stories that surrounds us becomes a space where doubt and ambivalence reside.