Tristan Jalleh

Tristan Jalleh, Still from Mnemory Palace II, 2020
Tristan Jalleh, Still from Mnemory Palace II, 2020

Tristan Jalleh is a digital bowerbird, a near future Dadaist who collects alluring visual traces in his worldmaking practice. Using his smartphone camera to scan and record the real world, Jalleh then dissects, layers, draws and composes elements into his assemblages. Working in Motion 5 to make fluid transitions between segments, he uses colour, texture and shifting ambient light on surfaces to enhance spatial movement and depth.

Mnemory Palace II alludes to a fictive site with the ability to stimulate the retrieval of personal and collective memories. The portrait orientation of the display screen and the overlay of animated graphics makes obvious connections for the viewer between the work and the more intimate interface of the smartphone.

Tristan Jalleh, Still from Nadir, 2019

Directly referencing the point beneath one’s feet, Nadir evokes vertigo. This virtual hybrid landscape is based on imaging taken at an abandoned hotel construction near central Bangkok. Floating at the edge of a precipice, above eroding concrete and steel girders, the artist elicits feelings of unease and vulnerability in the viewer. The key objects that populate the scene are approaching obsolescence, or under the threat of elimination. The artist says this aesthetic emerges from an appreciation for the ‘constant churn of construction and demolition’.