Tobias Dostal
LED the Sunshine
18 Dec 2014 - 01 Mar 2015
Kunstverein Langenhagen is proud to present Tobias Dostal's soloshow as part of the New York Stipent 2013 of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung and the state of Lower Saxony. For aperiod of one year, the stipendiaries receive a monthly grant and an apartment in New York. In addition, the stipend includes the provision of a studio at the famous International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn. After returning from New York, the artists have since 2005 been offered the opportunity of displaying their works at two art associations in Lower Saxony.
At the second stop of the exhibition at the Kunstverein Langenhagen the enclosed exhibition space presents other perspectives onto the oeuvre of Tobias Dostal than the first stop at lightfilld mission of the state of Lower Saxony to the federal government in Berlin could do. In Langenhagen Dostal's striking film installations can radiate all of their magic without having to assert themselves in competition with additional stimuli from an external space. Instead, the exhibition LED The Sunshine offers the possibility of transforming the space into zones of various “filmic” attractions. Tobias Dostal‘s fascination with the “Cinema of Attraction” is already evident in his early works.
“Cinema of Attraction” refers to the early cinema at the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth century. As carnival attractions for a wide audience, film presentations were oriented primarily toward direct visual effects. These early cinematic experiments are marked by a sensual pleasure in the images, visual tricks, and what are for the most part brief plot elements. The “Expanded Cinema” of the nineteensixties and -seventies constitutes a further important referential framework. The artists considered to be part of this “Expanded Cinema” revolted, among other things, against the “orientation” of the audience toward a central screen and projection from outside the room. They experimented with multipleprojections, changing projection surfaces, and the newly decreed status of the projector as one of the components of an expanded filmic space. Today with reference to this tradition, artists such as Rosa Barba and Wolfgang Plöger make filmic apparatuses or film strips the subject of their works and bear witness to the unbroken timeliness that characterizes the “performance practice” of the medium of film in current artistic production.
With LED The Sunshine, Tobias Dostal creates an integrated filmic space and literally involves the visitors in the light display. In Shadow , (2012), the images become visible as soon as bodies become available as projection surfaces. Blockbuster , (2014) must likewise be walked through in order to see the filmstrips illuminated by LEDs. Voyage avec néné , (2014), a tribute to the film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861–1938) and his film Le voyage dans la Lune, (1902), consists of eighteen tripods, each with three projectors of individual images whichproject the images from various directions in different rhythms. Satellit , (2014) on the other hand, hovers as an apparatus hung from the ceiling but has brought along its own projection screen. Appearing on the screen are sketched puzzle-pictures which present poetical narratives of the human condition and, with a wink of the eye, reflect the abstract messages circulating through outer space and addressed to extraterrestrial life-forms. This visual cosmos arises out of Tobias Dostal‘s love for virtuosic play with the illusion-creating machinery of film images. With a poetical and humorous mixture of low- and high-tech, the adroit illusionist Tobias Dostal cultivates a deliberate flirting with nostalgia as Kunstverein Langenhagen is proud to present Tobias Dostal's soloshow as part of the New York Stipent 2013 of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung and the state of Lower Saxony. For aperiod of one year, the stipendiaries receive a monthly grant and an apartment in New York. In addition, the stipend includes the provision of a studio at the famous International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn. After returning from New York, the artists have since 2005 been offered the opportunity of displaying their works at two art associations in Lower Saxony.
At the second stop of the exhibition at the Kunstverein Langenhagen the enclosed exhibition space presents other perspectives onto the oeuvre of Tobias Dostal than the first stop at lightfilld mission of the state of Lower Saxony to the federal government in Berlin could do. In Langenhagen Dostal's striking film installations can radiate all of their magic without having to assert themselves in competition with additional stimuli from an external space. Instead, the exhibition LED The Sunshine offers the possibility of transforming the space into zones of various “filmic” attractions. Tobias Dostal‘s fascination with the “Cinema of Attraction” is already evident in his early works.
“Cinema of Attraction” refers to the early cinema at the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth century. As carnival attractions for a wide audience, film presentations were oriented primarily toward direct visual effects. These early cinematic experiments are marked by a sensual pleasure in the images, visual tricks, and what are for the most part brief plot elements. The “Expanded Cinema” of the nineteensixties and -seventies constitutes a further important referential framework. The artists considered to be part of this “Expanded Cinema” revolted, among other things, against the “orientation” of the audience toward a central screen and projection from outside the room. They experimented with multipleprojections, changing projection surfaces, and the newly decreed status of the projector as one of the components of an expanded filmic space. Today with reference to this tradition, artists such as Rosa Barba and Wolfgang Plöger make filmic apparatuses or film strips the subject of their works and bear witness to the unbroken timeliness that characterizes the “performance practice” of the medium of film in current artistic production.
With LED The Sunshine, Tobias Dostal creates an integrated filmic space and literally involves the visitors in the light display. In Shadow , (2012), the images become visible as soon as bodies become available as projection surfaces. Blockbuster , (2014) must likewise be walked through in order to see the filmstrips illuminated by LEDs. Voyage avec néné , (2014), a tribute to the film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861–1938) and his film Le voyage dans la Lune, (1902), consists of eighteen tripods, each with three projectors of individual images whichproject the images from various directions in different rhythms. Satellit , (2014) on the other hand, hovers as an apparatus hung from the ceiling but has brought along its own projection screen. Appearing on the screen are sketched puzzle-pictures which present poetical narratives of the human condition and, with a wink of the eye, reflect the abstract messages circulating through outer space and addressed to extraterrestrial life-forms. This visual cosmos arises out of Tobias Dostal‘s love for virtuosic play with the illusion-creating machinery of film images. With a poetical and humorous mixture of low- and high-tech, the adroit illusionist Tobias Dostal cultivates a deliberate flirting with nostalgia as the catalogue Three Dollars plus five Euros is will be presented at the opening.
At the second stop of the exhibition at the Kunstverein Langenhagen the enclosed exhibition space presents other perspectives onto the oeuvre of Tobias Dostal than the first stop at lightfilld mission of the state of Lower Saxony to the federal government in Berlin could do. In Langenhagen Dostal's striking film installations can radiate all of their magic without having to assert themselves in competition with additional stimuli from an external space. Instead, the exhibition LED The Sunshine offers the possibility of transforming the space into zones of various “filmic” attractions. Tobias Dostal‘s fascination with the “Cinema of Attraction” is already evident in his early works.
“Cinema of Attraction” refers to the early cinema at the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth century. As carnival attractions for a wide audience, film presentations were oriented primarily toward direct visual effects. These early cinematic experiments are marked by a sensual pleasure in the images, visual tricks, and what are for the most part brief plot elements. The “Expanded Cinema” of the nineteensixties and -seventies constitutes a further important referential framework. The artists considered to be part of this “Expanded Cinema” revolted, among other things, against the “orientation” of the audience toward a central screen and projection from outside the room. They experimented with multipleprojections, changing projection surfaces, and the newly decreed status of the projector as one of the components of an expanded filmic space. Today with reference to this tradition, artists such as Rosa Barba and Wolfgang Plöger make filmic apparatuses or film strips the subject of their works and bear witness to the unbroken timeliness that characterizes the “performance practice” of the medium of film in current artistic production.
With LED The Sunshine, Tobias Dostal creates an integrated filmic space and literally involves the visitors in the light display. In Shadow , (2012), the images become visible as soon as bodies become available as projection surfaces. Blockbuster , (2014) must likewise be walked through in order to see the filmstrips illuminated by LEDs. Voyage avec néné , (2014), a tribute to the film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861–1938) and his film Le voyage dans la Lune, (1902), consists of eighteen tripods, each with three projectors of individual images whichproject the images from various directions in different rhythms. Satellit , (2014) on the other hand, hovers as an apparatus hung from the ceiling but has brought along its own projection screen. Appearing on the screen are sketched puzzle-pictures which present poetical narratives of the human condition and, with a wink of the eye, reflect the abstract messages circulating through outer space and addressed to extraterrestrial life-forms. This visual cosmos arises out of Tobias Dostal‘s love for virtuosic play with the illusion-creating machinery of film images. With a poetical and humorous mixture of low- and high-tech, the adroit illusionist Tobias Dostal cultivates a deliberate flirting with nostalgia as Kunstverein Langenhagen is proud to present Tobias Dostal's soloshow as part of the New York Stipent 2013 of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung and the state of Lower Saxony. For aperiod of one year, the stipendiaries receive a monthly grant and an apartment in New York. In addition, the stipend includes the provision of a studio at the famous International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn. After returning from New York, the artists have since 2005 been offered the opportunity of displaying their works at two art associations in Lower Saxony.
At the second stop of the exhibition at the Kunstverein Langenhagen the enclosed exhibition space presents other perspectives onto the oeuvre of Tobias Dostal than the first stop at lightfilld mission of the state of Lower Saxony to the federal government in Berlin could do. In Langenhagen Dostal's striking film installations can radiate all of their magic without having to assert themselves in competition with additional stimuli from an external space. Instead, the exhibition LED The Sunshine offers the possibility of transforming the space into zones of various “filmic” attractions. Tobias Dostal‘s fascination with the “Cinema of Attraction” is already evident in his early works.
“Cinema of Attraction” refers to the early cinema at the threshold between the nineteenth and twentieth century. As carnival attractions for a wide audience, film presentations were oriented primarily toward direct visual effects. These early cinematic experiments are marked by a sensual pleasure in the images, visual tricks, and what are for the most part brief plot elements. The “Expanded Cinema” of the nineteensixties and -seventies constitutes a further important referential framework. The artists considered to be part of this “Expanded Cinema” revolted, among other things, against the “orientation” of the audience toward a central screen and projection from outside the room. They experimented with multipleprojections, changing projection surfaces, and the newly decreed status of the projector as one of the components of an expanded filmic space. Today with reference to this tradition, artists such as Rosa Barba and Wolfgang Plöger make filmic apparatuses or film strips the subject of their works and bear witness to the unbroken timeliness that characterizes the “performance practice” of the medium of film in current artistic production.
With LED The Sunshine, Tobias Dostal creates an integrated filmic space and literally involves the visitors in the light display. In Shadow , (2012), the images become visible as soon as bodies become available as projection surfaces. Blockbuster , (2014) must likewise be walked through in order to see the filmstrips illuminated by LEDs. Voyage avec néné , (2014), a tribute to the film pioneer Georges Méliès (1861–1938) and his film Le voyage dans la Lune, (1902), consists of eighteen tripods, each with three projectors of individual images whichproject the images from various directions in different rhythms. Satellit , (2014) on the other hand, hovers as an apparatus hung from the ceiling but has brought along its own projection screen. Appearing on the screen are sketched puzzle-pictures which present poetical narratives of the human condition and, with a wink of the eye, reflect the abstract messages circulating through outer space and addressed to extraterrestrial life-forms. This visual cosmos arises out of Tobias Dostal‘s love for virtuosic play with the illusion-creating machinery of film images. With a poetical and humorous mixture of low- and high-tech, the adroit illusionist Tobias Dostal cultivates a deliberate flirting with nostalgia as the catalogue Three Dollars plus five Euros is will be presented at the opening.