Sam Smith
07 - 30 Mar 2014
SAM SMITH
Form Variations
7 - 30 March 2014
For his exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Sam Smith presents the new video installation titled Form Variations (2014). Encompassing video, sculpture and architectural elements, the project looks at the relationship of the human figure to sculptural form, and more specifically how they are framed within the cinematic lens. In the central video work objects and locations are reconfigured into a series of shifting vignettes where the controlling hand of the artist is acutely present. Shot in CinemaScope, the work uses the 2.39:1 wide frame to maximise a heightened cinematographic view on three-dimensional form and architectural setting. Key to the video is a re-imagining of the opening shot from Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962) in which a motionless close-up frame portrays a collection of books, sculptural objects, lamps and the character of Riccardo’s arm.
Sam Smith works across sculptural construction and moving image, in an exploration of filmic language and its relationship to object. Intersecting the formal and conceptual frameworks that have previously separated these artistic disciplines he invests film and video with ideas relating to three-dimensional space while expanding object-based work into temporal territory, asking us to rethink sculpture as montage and cinematic editing as object construction.
Form Variations
7 - 30 March 2014
For his exhibition at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Sam Smith presents the new video installation titled Form Variations (2014). Encompassing video, sculpture and architectural elements, the project looks at the relationship of the human figure to sculptural form, and more specifically how they are framed within the cinematic lens. In the central video work objects and locations are reconfigured into a series of shifting vignettes where the controlling hand of the artist is acutely present. Shot in CinemaScope, the work uses the 2.39:1 wide frame to maximise a heightened cinematographic view on three-dimensional form and architectural setting. Key to the video is a re-imagining of the opening shot from Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse (1962) in which a motionless close-up frame portrays a collection of books, sculptural objects, lamps and the character of Riccardo’s arm.
Sam Smith works across sculptural construction and moving image, in an exploration of filmic language and its relationship to object. Intersecting the formal and conceptual frameworks that have previously separated these artistic disciplines he invests film and video with ideas relating to three-dimensional space while expanding object-based work into temporal territory, asking us to rethink sculpture as montage and cinematic editing as object construction.