Daiga Grantina
13 Jul - 26 Aug 2012
DAIGA GRANTINA
Fuse Fuse (Diana At Her Bath)
13 July — 26 August 2012
From July 13 through August 26, 2012, NAK. Neuer Aachener Kunstverein presents a solo exhibition by Daiga Grantina (*1985 in Riga) at the Glasbox. Titled “Fuse Fuse (Diana at her Bath)”, Grantina shows recent works evolving around her reading of Pierre Klossowski’s ‘Diana at her Bath’.
The show presents a combination of Grantina’s filmic and print-based practice. By the usage of expired Super 8 material and by means of experimental interventions in computer-based imaging techniques the artist inserts open and unbiased scope into her work.
For this project at NAK, Grantina chose to present her latest film “Diana at her Bath” together with an object entitled “Identifaction with a Stag”. The latter is a monoprint of six cardboard panels hanging in the window of the Kunstverein. The printing technique applied here results from a process which combines different ways of transferring ink (by heat or the use of acetone). Thereby the surface of the single panels serves as quasi-photographic material.
Behaving as a blind and disposed in order to provide a shadow for the projected image, this object might evoke Actaeons fragmented body torn apart by his own dogs. Attracted by the glow of the goddess’ skin, Actaeon is overwhelmed by the temptation to slide into sin and to lay eyes on the bathing huntress. Diana punishes him for this impudence by splashing him with the water of her bath and turning him into a stag.
This moment of blinding is situated at the core of Daiga Grantina’s approach of the myth. Tracking the French artist Pierre Klossowski who published ‘Diana et her Bath’ in 1956, an oeuvre that begins with a quotation from Ovid (‘Metamorphoses III’) in Latin :
“Nunc tibi me posito visam velamine narres,
Si poteris narrare, licet.”
This sentence points out Actaeon’s inability – as a stag – to tell what he has witnessed of Diana’s nudity. Incapable of doing so he also fails to call his dogs that soon tear him to pieces.
This blind spot, the impossibility of recounting the forbidden sight, is the underlying motive force of this Aachen installation and its double-sided object, which behaves as the silent hyphen between the bathing figure and the potentially intrusive peeping. The thin black line framing each of the six panels allows the object to be thought of as the filmstrip’s static twin. Staging the encounter of the dead carcass with the cut out filmlet, this frame-by-frame print can be seen as an attempt to re-compose the violently fragmented body of the unlucky god (Fuse Fuse).
Part of the setting in the Glasbox is a translation of Jean Roudaut’s essay “Simulacrum by Pierre Klossowski” by Rosa Joly (who additionally appears in the role of Diana).
Jean Roudaut, “Simulacrum by Pierre Klossowski”, in: Centre Georges Pompidou (ed.), Cahier pour un Temps, Paris, 1985.
Fuse Fuse (Diana At Her Bath)
13 July — 26 August 2012
From July 13 through August 26, 2012, NAK. Neuer Aachener Kunstverein presents a solo exhibition by Daiga Grantina (*1985 in Riga) at the Glasbox. Titled “Fuse Fuse (Diana at her Bath)”, Grantina shows recent works evolving around her reading of Pierre Klossowski’s ‘Diana at her Bath’.
The show presents a combination of Grantina’s filmic and print-based practice. By the usage of expired Super 8 material and by means of experimental interventions in computer-based imaging techniques the artist inserts open and unbiased scope into her work.
For this project at NAK, Grantina chose to present her latest film “Diana at her Bath” together with an object entitled “Identifaction with a Stag”. The latter is a monoprint of six cardboard panels hanging in the window of the Kunstverein. The printing technique applied here results from a process which combines different ways of transferring ink (by heat or the use of acetone). Thereby the surface of the single panels serves as quasi-photographic material.
Behaving as a blind and disposed in order to provide a shadow for the projected image, this object might evoke Actaeons fragmented body torn apart by his own dogs. Attracted by the glow of the goddess’ skin, Actaeon is overwhelmed by the temptation to slide into sin and to lay eyes on the bathing huntress. Diana punishes him for this impudence by splashing him with the water of her bath and turning him into a stag.
This moment of blinding is situated at the core of Daiga Grantina’s approach of the myth. Tracking the French artist Pierre Klossowski who published ‘Diana et her Bath’ in 1956, an oeuvre that begins with a quotation from Ovid (‘Metamorphoses III’) in Latin :
“Nunc tibi me posito visam velamine narres,
Si poteris narrare, licet.”
This sentence points out Actaeon’s inability – as a stag – to tell what he has witnessed of Diana’s nudity. Incapable of doing so he also fails to call his dogs that soon tear him to pieces.
This blind spot, the impossibility of recounting the forbidden sight, is the underlying motive force of this Aachen installation and its double-sided object, which behaves as the silent hyphen between the bathing figure and the potentially intrusive peeping. The thin black line framing each of the six panels allows the object to be thought of as the filmstrip’s static twin. Staging the encounter of the dead carcass with the cut out filmlet, this frame-by-frame print can be seen as an attempt to re-compose the violently fragmented body of the unlucky god (Fuse Fuse).
Part of the setting in the Glasbox is a translation of Jean Roudaut’s essay “Simulacrum by Pierre Klossowski” by Rosa Joly (who additionally appears in the role of Diana).
Jean Roudaut, “Simulacrum by Pierre Klossowski”, in: Centre Georges Pompidou (ed.), Cahier pour un Temps, Paris, 1985.