McMystery Mansion
Jeremy Blake's Winchester Trilogy surveys a Western landscape, a San Jose landmark, and U.S. expansionism through kaleidoscopic filters.

By Glen Helfand

A BIG BLUR: Jeremy Blake takes on homeland security, real estate
development, and manifest destiny in short films from his Winchester
Trilogy (including 2002's "Winchester," top, and 2004's "Century 21"),
on exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Stills © Jeremy
Blake, courtesy of the artist and Feigen Contemporary, New York.

The Winchester Mystery House is a tourist attraction devoted to the unexpectedly macabre themes of spirituality, madness, and sprawl. Haunted by her deceased child and husband and the countless who had been shot dead by her family's wares, Winchester was instructed by a psychic advisor to head west from Boston and build a monument to contain those restless, tortured souls. The 160-room estate, built almost like an architectural crazy quilt, is a gingerbread labyrinth with stairs that lead nowhere and spooky spiderweb patterns in the stained glass. Affectless teens lead tours through the unfurnished rooms, reciting a script full of haunted-house hooey.

The place is both more and less than you want it to be. Winchester was indeed a maverick, a woman architect, a staunch individualist who reportedly turned away Teddy Roosevelt when he paid her a visit, and as such she embodies much of the California dream of maverick individualism and the freedom to do what you want to the land.

Winchester and her iconic home are the subject of artist Jeremy Blake's compelling, abstract trio of films, the Winchester Trilogy, currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In his list of show acknowledgments, Blake terms Winchester an "architect, inventor, and artist," and indeed, she serves as an inspiration ripe with allusions and visual associations.

The trilogy comprises the short films "Winchester" (2002), "1906" (2003), and "Century 21" (2004). For the first time, the three films screen simultaneously, side by side, in the gallery, and the grouping creates a mesmerizing cinematic environment, with softly pulsating interplays of images – the San Jose estate and cowboy images from film and history – and color that burns and fades. In this seductive universe, smoking guns morph into ghostly, ectoplasmic blobs. The films feature sophisticated, sometimes spooky sound design. The tone of the soundtracks and the slowly shifting images position these pieces somewhere between paintings and cinema. The artist calls them "time-based paintings," a particularly 21st-century form.

Image overlord

Blake came to art-world prominence at the turn of this century by expressing a generational attitude toward image overload – the 33-year-old artist's work is extremely layered with images – and he uses digital technologies to create his projects. He was a standout in 2001 shows such as SFMOMA's "010101: Art in Technological Times" and the Whitney's "Bitstreams," yet his work now seems far removed from the term "digital." Rather, the Winchester Trilogy is steeped in a hand-burnished sense of history – not to mention abstract-painting issues (he studied at CalArts with classmates such as the now-famous painters Laura Owens and Monique Prieto).

Blake is tall and indie-musician handsome, with a stubbly beard, and he exudes a magnetic down-to-earth glamour when he addresses a lecture audience at SFMOMA, cracking self-effacing jokes and referring to slides of his oil-on-canvas paintings (yes, he actually makes those) with a brash tone. In a more intimate conversation in the darkened gallery where his project unfolds, however, Blake seems more a deeply thoughtful, serious artist who reveals that his inspirations for the trilogy stemmed from heady sources – from reading volumes on American history and studying architecture and philosophy – as well as from pop culture (Dark Shadows and Raquel Welch as a gunslinger in the 1972 rape-revenge western Hannie Caulder; the latter will screen April 14 at the museum).

He locates some of his inspiration for the trilogy in his move to California to create the moody, multicolored animation sequences for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2002 film Punch Drunk Love (he created similar footage for Beck's Sea Change tour). "I noticed all these new houses maxing out the lots. Someone called it 'mansionism,' " he says. "Winchester was perhaps a first example of this: the first McMansion. It's way, way, way more space than you need to live. It's amazing to realize that the first McMansion was built to house phantoms."

"And the language I use to express the haunting," he adds, "is abstraction." It works magnificently on the visual surface, but Blake has a lot more on his mind. He describes how his early work on canvas wasn't quite enough: "I just couldn't manage to keep things alive on one panel."

Securing this world and the next

The combination of social criticism and poignant metaphor collides in the three films beneath a densely ornate visual design that alludes to the Victorian impulse to cover everything over in pattern. "I think the house is a narrative pile-up," Blake admits. "Homeland security and manifest destiny, guarding against unseen threats yet expanding without limits – the house embodies both of these. In the U.S., there's also the Protestant work ethic, the idea of working in this world to justify getting to the next. All this is beautifully expressed in this house." Add the irony of the geodesic-domed movie theaters next door – three structures called Century 21, 22, and 23 – and add the theme of cinema and its perpetuation of dreams.

You don't have to know any of this, however, for the trio of films to quickly pull you in. Blake is pleasantly surprised to see the interplay between the films. "The way these three come together to become one thing, the push-pull between the images is free-form and not chaotic. Like a good jazz group or something." Actually, the ways the films weave together sometimes seem uncanny, similar to the way a spire on the "1906" Victorian, for example, links to the more modernist architecture in "Century 21." The associations happen almost on cue.

"I didn't expect this installation to be this abstract and relaxing," he says. "No matter how tough I think my show is going to be, there's always a kind of seduction going. It's not necessarily happy, but it's beautiful." 'Jeremy Blake: Winchester' runs through Aug. 14. Fri.-Tues., 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thurs., 11 a.m.-9 p.m., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third St., S.F. $6-$10. (415) 357-4000. Hannie Caulder screens April 14, 7 p.m., Phyllis Wattis Theater, SFMOMA. $8-$12. For more information on the Winchester Mystery House, go to www.winchestermysteryhouse.com.