The
Renaissance
Society

The late Tiia Johannson made this work shortly after being diagnosed with Hodgkins disease. The title is a metaphor for depression. The background features video footage shot during a 1990 vacation in Aland, a Baltic sea archipelago--a trip her husband, artist Raivo Kelomees, recalls as a very happy time. Johannson symbolically inverted the color values so that it appears as a solarized negative. Like her pain, the superimposed circle contracts and expands becoming more or less obtrusive but never disappearing. Due in large part to the grungy, hypnotic throb of its beautifully primitive rock soundtrack, Black Sun recalls the mid-1960's film and music experiments of Tony Conrad, notably his work with John Cale.