Blinded

W: 54" D: 1" H: 42"

Pigment ink on Canvas

2020

Entitled "Blinded," this painting by Chicago-based artist Jan Pieter Fokkens offers a representation of an atomic test during Operation Teapot, that took place at the Nevada Test Site in the spring of 1955. It portrays a delegation of army officials, all wearing protective goggles, observing the detonation of a nuclear bomb. The operation aimed to establish military tactics for ground forces on a nuclear battlefield and to improve the nuclear weapons used for strategic delivery.

Inspired by de-classified images of nuclear tests, contemporary computer compression algorithms and early non-representational art, Fokkens recreates images that exist at the verge of our imagination. Done completely by hand, each work is created with the use of custom algorithms that extract qualities such as pattern, form and color. For this series the “sanitized” declassified documents, full of black outs and opaque cover up tape, were the inspiration for the way in which each mark was drawn. The result is a reductionist, analogue interpretation of an unimaginable and obscured reality.