As the exhibition title, Cryptomnesia, suggests, memory is both an authentic, if faulty, recollection of events, and an appropriated work of the imagination. About the lenticulars, which take center-stage at this show, and which synthesize the ambiguity of memory in a sequence of transforming images, Van Eyssen says, “They're interactive… they change as the viewer moves position, and the picture collects, fragments, and coheres again. I want them to feel like synaptic bursts of color and form that produce the sensation of something etched into the mind.”

Originally a painter, working with encaustic and mixed media, Van Eyssen’s interest in tonal and chromatic surfaces is evident in the digital and lenticular works on display. Beginning with pieces that combine cellphone photographs and video with Super-8 footage shot in his childhood, the projection work 12E explores the fictional territory of memory, and its fragile relationship to identity. Layering of images and abstract fragmentation give way, in later screen works that lean against the studio walls, to planes of color and movement that seem to form a more coherent visual structure. These pieces, particularly the diptych, And We Protest Death In Green, infer renewal and rebirth, as well as time’s loss — locating personal, and public, events of the past eighteen months against a barren landscape inhabited by animal life, and distant human figures.

On the far wall of the exhibition space, beyond the OLED displays, the lenticulars are surprisingly luminous, distilling memory into a handful of potent images of gazing figures cast against coastlines, fields, or views of the city by night. Revealing hidden images as we move around the title work, Cryptomnesia, and a second large-format piece, The View In Color, Van Eyssen’s earlier interest in “time as memory” morphs into the recognition that past — and present — are fragile constructions. Films in five frames, and countless shifting layers, these lenticular works can only be discovered, and decoded, over time.

CRYPTOMNESIA, an exhibition of new digital and lenticular work by David Van Eyssen, has been extended until October 1, 2021. The gallery is located at 508A Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90401. Studio viewings by appointment only: vaneyssenstudiovisit.as.me/book