Erik my friend is soon in Copehagen::
Month: January 2010
JASON DUNGAN
JASON DUNGAN
DOT DASH
Nicholas Robinson Gallery is pleased to present Dot Dash, a new single channel video by filmmaker Jason Dungan.
Filmed entirely on the islands of Tanna and Efate in Vanuatu, Dot Dash articulates a version of island life, greatly informed by the legacy of Post-colonialism. The video opens with a long, non-narrative sequence of still imagery, each depicting various natural and man-made objects on the island: a hand holding a yam, a satellite dish, tree roots, a man repairing a car, palm fronds, men raising an American flag on bamboo poles in uniform. Throughout the film, Dungan overlays both sequences of Morse code and as his own voice-overs to investigate how language is complicated by different cultures. The film presents an anti-narrative of local life: American and local flags are raised and lowered, yams are cultivated in a lush tropical garden, billboards illustrate people in “traditional” dress speaking on a cell phone.
Dungan weaves together images to suggest words or sentences, a private language known only perhaps to the film itself. Some scenes reveal muted conversations, but we are unable to hear what is being said. In other sections, voiceovers move from a matter-of-fact description of yam cultivation to a fanciful idea about running film up a flagpole, or burying a can of celluloid in the earth. Could a film be made about a place without the use of a camera, simply by letting the film “soak up” or experience the environment? If the film is suggesting that objects themselves are informed by language, it is also implies that the objects will go on communicating whether there is someone to hear it or not.
Bjarne Melgaard//Jealous
Gianfranco Baruchello Screenings @ Galerie Michael Janssen Berlin
Artist Web/Blog::: Sirum
Matthew Brannon, Mathew Cerletty, David Diao & Daniel Sinsel
Robert Zungu @ Nicholas Robinson Gallery
LUCA PANCRAZZI
LUCA PANCRAZZI: Stilllife
Faggionato Fine Art is delighted to present the first UK exhibition of work by Italian artist Luca Pancrazzi.
The exhibition is comprised of six recent still-life paintings; a genre that has consistently fascinated the artist and one which he has explored throughout his career. Based on photographs taken by the artist, the often large-scale, monochrome canvases bestow a monumental scale to the typically humble, day-to-day objects of his studio. The result is not intended to be a faithful or objective rendition of subject; but is, rather, a carefully staged composition, imbued with an exquisite artificial theatricality.
Suggesting an interest in perception, memory and transformation, the works raise questions about the relationship of the subject with its representation; the act of translation that governs not only the making of a work in a particular medium, but also our beholding.
Born in 1961 in Florence, Luca Pancrazzi now lives and works in Milan. Throughout his career, he has used a wide range of media from painting and photography to video, light-boxes, sculpture and large installation pieces. Recent installations include the extraordinary Il paesaggio ci osserva, a miniature model city made of old computer and typewriter parts complete with surveillance cameras and monitors exhibited at Art Unlimited, Art Basel in 2006 ; and his project 1:1 for the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2007 where he showed, amongst other pieces, a Maserati car covered in recycled, shattered glass.
Artist web/Blog:: Damn
Jeppe Hein @ Nicolai Wallner
It is a great pleasure for Galleri Nicolai Wallner to present Milieu Social
a new installation by Danish artist Jeppe Hein.
Combining sculpture and installation with architecture and technology, Jeppe Hein sets up a dialogue between work, viewer and site. Like other of Hein’s work the particular installation for Milieu Social involves the physical presence of the viewer set against a pattern of minimal forms.
Milieu Social presents two rooms, one containing bicycle and the other a large mobile consisting of mirrored disks suspended from the ceiling. The two parts of the installation are connected by simple but ingenious machinery that allows the viewer to animate the mobile by moving the pedals of the bicycle.
Each of the mirrors in the mobile presents new views of the visitors caught in the middle of the seamless gallery space. Surrounded by mirrors, you become at once actor and audience, viewer and viewed, and your reflected image is simultaneously fractured and multiplied.
Ironically the person that is powering the work is at the same time excluded from seeing it. After taking seat in contraption it become obvious that a dividing wall obstructs the view of the mobile. Hein contests the accepted conventions of viewing and presents an energetic and playfully antagonistic relationship between art and audience. We are encouraged to participate in the creation of the artwork but are denied access to it. Hein likes to tease the viewer and carefully examines our individual and socially conditioned responses.
Importantly Hein’s artistic production contains its fair share of humor. There is an absurd fascination of overtly complex machinery and innovation. Though not necessarily the full answer to the world’s demand for clean energy, pedal power technology seems to have its own strange allure. It represents a certain causality that both puzzles and challenges the viewer.
With Milieu Social Hein seems to point to a new understanding of the exhibition space as a social environment. The exhibition deftly subverts preconceived notions making the viewer both instigator and object.
Jeppe Hein currently has a large solo exhibition at ARoS Kunstmuseum (Aarhus). He has previously had solo exhibitions at several other prestigious institutions including Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Tate Liverpool (Liverpool), Spregel Museum (Hannover), Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt), Frac Île-de-France (Paris), Sculpture Centre (New York), Musée d’Art contemporain de Nîmes (Nîmes), and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York).