The exhibition Bernd Oppl: Inhabited Interiors is on display through Sept. 16 in the Georgia Museum of Art’s Alonzo and Vallye Dudley Gallery, which focuses on new-media art.
The exhibition was organized by Laura Valeri, associate curator of European art. It consists of three short films inspired by the work of Alfred Hitchcock and horror film aesthetics: Hotel Room, Flock and Sick Building. Oppl builds miniature architectural models, then introduces an unpredictable element into the scene and films the result, often rotating the model to produce visual effects. For example, Flock features a home inhabited by a strange, dark dust cloud, while in Sick Building a gelatinous substance drips from floor to ceiling.
“Oppl’s painstaking process is especially interesting to me,” Valeri said. “He spends a lot of time watching films to ‘collect samples’ to synthesize into one model, which he sketches on a computer. Then, he searches for the perfect material to invade the space-in the case of Flock, poppy seeds-and finally builds and mechanizes the model. In the final product, the model looks like a life-size interior, and the poppy seeds look like dust or a shadow.”
By having the moving images seem to defy the laws of physics, Oppl attempts to make the viewer question reality.
“In the end, the video camera is the middle man, and it completely changes our perception, ” Valeri said. “Oppl calls it ‘the displacement of the eye by camera.’ ”
The films themselves range from four to seven minutes. Oppl’s art has appeared in film festivals all over the world, including Croatia and the Netherlands.