Operation Teapot-Apple (Triptych)

W: 24" D: 1" H: 72"

Pigment ink on Photo Paper

2010

Entitled "Operation Teapot Apple" this painting by Chicago-based artist Jan Pieter Fokkens offers a representation of an atomic test that took place at the Nevada Test Site in 1955. Nicknamed “Survival Town”, the destructive forces of nuclear weapons on civilian structures was researched during this operation. At the same time Rapatronic Photography was developed in Hollywood, these camera’s were capable of recording still images with  exposure times as brief as a microsecond. This Triptych is a representation of this new reality of time.

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. Fokkens then draws these abstracted qualities with repetitive marks on photopaper. In similar fashion as the “sanitized” and declassified documents, full of black outs and opaque cover up tape, that accompany these nuclear tests. The result is a reductionist, analogue interpretation of an unimaginable and obscured reality.