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March 27, 2008- April 26, 2008
Reception: March 27, 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm
David Claerbout
Yvon Lambert Gallery
550 W 21st St |  David Claerbout Dancing Couples (after: Couples at square dance, McIntosh Country, Oklahoma, 1939 or 1940) (still) (2008) © David Claerbout Courtesy Yvon Lambert Paris, New York |
In his works, Claerbout blurs the line between the still and the moving image, digitally manipulating analogue images to create works that invite a reconsideration of both the image and our perception of time and space. His works are marked by an interrogation of time as an artistic medium. Claerbout introduces narrative elements developing a kind of ‘photography in movement’ into ‘still movements’. The artist employs visual materials ranging from historical photographs, reconstructed pictures, to film footage he has directed in his photographic and cinematic installations. In some works he digitally composes the image combining the inherent differences of film and photography, reflecting his continuous exploration of ideas of reconciliation and reconnection.
In Then Came This, the artist will debut four films: Long Goodbye, 2007, Arena, 2007, Dancing Couples (after: Couples at square dance, McIntosh County, Oklahoma, 1939 or 1940), 2008 and The Algier’s Sections Of Happy A Moment, 2008.
Long Goodbye is a video study of the movement of a female protagonist during a sunset registered by a single ultra-slow backward camera movement. The woman walks out of the front door, steps onto the terrace, looks into the camera, smiles, and waves goodbye. The video starts with a close-up and as the camera moves backwards it captures her gestures in slow motion. In contrast, the passing of time is represented by ever quickening sequences of fading daylight.
Arena is a digital slideshow of portraits of basketball players, referees and spectators captured in the moment where a point is scored. Each image is recorded individually; the slideshow captures faces during the outcome. In each portrait, the people seem to look back at the viewer.
Dancing Couples (after: Couples at square dance, McIntosh County, Oklahoma, 1939 or 1940), 2008 is based on the presence of ‘reflected light’. The photographs are of couples square dancing in Oklahoma in the late 1930s. The strobe of the flash made the photographs possible more than 60 years ago; the current work is shown using a projector. The projector light by which the original picture is seen today bears an uncanny resemblance to the method of the 1930's flash strobe's beam of light.
The Algier’s Sections of a Happy Moment, 2008 is set in a small soccer field on a roof of the casbah of Algier, with a view over the labyrinth of houses facing the Mediterranean Sea. Young Maghrebians surrounded by a group of elderly pause their soccer game as one of the players feeds a group of eager seagulls. The succession of images of this ‘happy' moment reflects Claerbout’s lifelong project to open up what he terms as 'the suspicious gaze'; this work investigates a recent fixation against a particular group of people. For this piece more than 50,000 photographs have been captured and after a lengthy selection process, 600 projected photos were carefully composed to create this continuous moment in time.
David Claerbout was born in Kortrijk, Belgium in 1969. He currently lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. Since the late 90’s, Claerbout’s work has been exhibited widely in international institutions and included in public collections such as Sammlung Goetz, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, De Pont Foundation, Boijmans van Beuningen, Hamburger Bahnhof, Centre Georges Pompidou Musée National d'Art Moderne. Claerbout recently presented a solo-exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. Solo-exhibitions will also be shown at the MIT List Visual Arts Center (February 8 through April 6, 2008), The Kunstmuseum St Gallen (May- June 2008), The Belkin Galleries, UBC, Vancouver (Fall 2008), and the De Pont Foundation, Tilburg.
Art Reviews of Then Came This
| New York Times April 25, 2008 | Roberta Smith | "The second New York show of the Belgian artist David Claerbout offers something new: the artist on DVD explaining his work, the show and some of its pieces. I suggest you ignore this introduction; it reveals that the drop-dead-beautiful French country house in one of Mr. Claerbout’s videos belongs to the owner of the gallery, and that’s what’s known as too much information. In addition, Mr. Claerbout, while extremely bright — and possibly smarter than his work — overdoes it. It’s more fun to navigate unassisted the shallow mysteries of his video meditations on cinematic time, light and space. Their precedents include the work of early avant-garde filmmakers like Michael Snow and appropriation art’s reliance on the human instinct to read stories into images...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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