Prinz Gholam
08 Nov - 21 Dec 2013
PRINZ GHOLAM
A Transmission The Ability To Draw
8 November – 21 December 2013
The descriptions of each work are the result of talks with Prinz Gholam in Berlin prior to the opening of the exhibition and a mental effort to visualize.
Prinz Gholam chose to divide the exhibition room into two spaces. One enters the exhibition uniquely through the entrance door, located to the right, which opens to a rectangular room where The Triple Hecate is presented. From here, one accesses another, more narrow room containing DAVID GOLIATH A transmission. The ability to draw. It is up to the viewer to establish (or not) a connection between the two propositions.
The Triple Hecate
The title of the work has for source William Blake’s painting, The Triple Hecate - The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (circa 1795). The goddess of fertility and the underworld at the same time, Hecate is represented by three bodies and three attributes – the lion, the dog and the donkey – which symbolize these three facets. In today’s esoteric literature, interest is placed in Hecate as a favorable divinity. She is called upon during times of change. Her answer – it is said – is not always the expected one.
The Triple Hecate is made up of two Plexiglass pedestals, two videos on monitors, and a performance transmitted, via a video projector, onto the wall facing the entrance. The performance took place on the two pedestals, placed along the wall to the right a few days prior to the exhibition opening. The projection slightly extends beyond the frame of the wall and makes visible the shadow of the central column as well as two monitors set against the wall on each side, without touching it.
Visually sitting on top of the monitors, which through the effect of superposition have become pedestals, Prinz Gholam separately string together a sequence of postures with their expository times, the moments of feeling one’s way, of making adjustments. Each develops his sequence while drawing from the eighteen postures commonly thought out and drawn, all the while remaining aware of the movements of the other and of the space: “The body is divided into two, but the unity is there”.
Each posture enters into relationship with the video pedestal that “supports” it. The unity becomes vertical. The video pedestals show two edited videos created using research of everyday form, filmed on a terrace of an apartment in Beirut. One can distinguish the soft sound of the city noise. The length of the postures of the two bodies is shorter than in the in situ performance and the scansions from one scene to another are sometimes abrupt.
The visitor is provided with “narrative” elements that hold the gaze for a moment: perspective or bas-relief type compositions, the Indian statue of a horse in fired clay – what is its role? –, remnants of a roof in the background, etc. The scenes were filmed with a canal video camera on the left and a Panasonic camera on the right. Therefore, there are two sources, on the left and on the right, which do not provide the same lighting or atmosphere.
The videos on the monitors last respectively eight and eleven minutes. A horizontal reading always confronts two new compositions that sometimes show the same posture with the same background. The viewer can seek out the similarities and differences between the two compositions.
Free to come and go between the two works in the exhibition, one discovers that, with each new passing, everything has changed and that new connections appear even though the frame stays the same.
The length of the projection of the performance is roughly thirty minutes. Beyond this time, there is a very short moment when one sees only the two videos on the monitors and the Plexiglass pedestals. They become “available”.
A presentation of the work in another context makes for a new in situ performance and its projection. New connections appear with the video pedestals and the architecture of the space.
DAVID GOLIATH A transmission. The ability to draw
David and Goliath:
The two drawings are studies of a posture that embody the characters of David and Goliath as represented in a painting by Guido Cagnacci. The first drawing, which is closer to the source image, directly underscores the elements of its construction. Drawn from the thighs upward, the body of David is in contrapposto. He is not looking in our direction. We see the connection between the hand held on the hip and that which grasps the head of Goliath.
The sketch of the neck and bust points to the explanation for the position of the head.
The second drawing represents the same composition en pied.
The art studio:
Having the same format, the photograph in the studio shows the dessin en pied being executed. Each artist observes and draws the pose of the other. The two photographs with their respective perspectives – also materialized by the presence of the camera tripod are reunited into one: each draws to understand the position of the other so that the two bodies can construct the final posture.
Frédéric Oyharçabal
Wolfgang Prinz (born in Leutkirch, Germany, 1969) and Michel Gholam (born in Beirut, Lebanon, 1963).
Met in 1993 and work together since 2000.
Live in Berlin, Germany
A Transmission The Ability To Draw
8 November – 21 December 2013
The descriptions of each work are the result of talks with Prinz Gholam in Berlin prior to the opening of the exhibition and a mental effort to visualize.
Prinz Gholam chose to divide the exhibition room into two spaces. One enters the exhibition uniquely through the entrance door, located to the right, which opens to a rectangular room where The Triple Hecate is presented. From here, one accesses another, more narrow room containing DAVID GOLIATH A transmission. The ability to draw. It is up to the viewer to establish (or not) a connection between the two propositions.
The Triple Hecate
The title of the work has for source William Blake’s painting, The Triple Hecate - The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (circa 1795). The goddess of fertility and the underworld at the same time, Hecate is represented by three bodies and three attributes – the lion, the dog and the donkey – which symbolize these three facets. In today’s esoteric literature, interest is placed in Hecate as a favorable divinity. She is called upon during times of change. Her answer – it is said – is not always the expected one.
The Triple Hecate is made up of two Plexiglass pedestals, two videos on monitors, and a performance transmitted, via a video projector, onto the wall facing the entrance. The performance took place on the two pedestals, placed along the wall to the right a few days prior to the exhibition opening. The projection slightly extends beyond the frame of the wall and makes visible the shadow of the central column as well as two monitors set against the wall on each side, without touching it.
Visually sitting on top of the monitors, which through the effect of superposition have become pedestals, Prinz Gholam separately string together a sequence of postures with their expository times, the moments of feeling one’s way, of making adjustments. Each develops his sequence while drawing from the eighteen postures commonly thought out and drawn, all the while remaining aware of the movements of the other and of the space: “The body is divided into two, but the unity is there”.
Each posture enters into relationship with the video pedestal that “supports” it. The unity becomes vertical. The video pedestals show two edited videos created using research of everyday form, filmed on a terrace of an apartment in Beirut. One can distinguish the soft sound of the city noise. The length of the postures of the two bodies is shorter than in the in situ performance and the scansions from one scene to another are sometimes abrupt.
The visitor is provided with “narrative” elements that hold the gaze for a moment: perspective or bas-relief type compositions, the Indian statue of a horse in fired clay – what is its role? –, remnants of a roof in the background, etc. The scenes were filmed with a canal video camera on the left and a Panasonic camera on the right. Therefore, there are two sources, on the left and on the right, which do not provide the same lighting or atmosphere.
The videos on the monitors last respectively eight and eleven minutes. A horizontal reading always confronts two new compositions that sometimes show the same posture with the same background. The viewer can seek out the similarities and differences between the two compositions.
Free to come and go between the two works in the exhibition, one discovers that, with each new passing, everything has changed and that new connections appear even though the frame stays the same.
The length of the projection of the performance is roughly thirty minutes. Beyond this time, there is a very short moment when one sees only the two videos on the monitors and the Plexiglass pedestals. They become “available”.
A presentation of the work in another context makes for a new in situ performance and its projection. New connections appear with the video pedestals and the architecture of the space.
DAVID GOLIATH A transmission. The ability to draw
David and Goliath:
The two drawings are studies of a posture that embody the characters of David and Goliath as represented in a painting by Guido Cagnacci. The first drawing, which is closer to the source image, directly underscores the elements of its construction. Drawn from the thighs upward, the body of David is in contrapposto. He is not looking in our direction. We see the connection between the hand held on the hip and that which grasps the head of Goliath.
The sketch of the neck and bust points to the explanation for the position of the head.
The second drawing represents the same composition en pied.
The art studio:
Having the same format, the photograph in the studio shows the dessin en pied being executed. Each artist observes and draws the pose of the other. The two photographs with their respective perspectives – also materialized by the presence of the camera tripod are reunited into one: each draws to understand the position of the other so that the two bodies can construct the final posture.
Frédéric Oyharçabal
Wolfgang Prinz (born in Leutkirch, Germany, 1969) and Michel Gholam (born in Beirut, Lebanon, 1963).
Met in 1993 and work together since 2000.
Live in Berlin, Germany