Anthony McCall, Luke Fowler, Bernard Voïta
30 May - 10 Sep 2014
Frames of Mind: Anthony McCall, Luke Fowler, Bernard Voïta
Installation view: ProjecteSD, Barcelona, 2014
Photograph: Roberto Ruíz
Installation view: ProjecteSD, Barcelona, 2014
Photograph: Roberto Ruíz
ANTHONY McCALL, LUKE FOWLER, BERNARD VOÏTA
Frames of Mind
30 May - 10 September 2014
ProjecteSD is pleased to present Frames of Mind, an exhibition which brings together the work of three artists belonging to different generations: Anthony McCall (United Kingdom, 1946), Luke Fowler (Glasgow, Scotland, 1978) and Bernard Voïta (Cully, Switzerland, 1960). The works shown in the exhibition are Slit-Scan (1972), an installation based on the projection of eighty one slides at maximum speed, Trax (2005) a video made up of a series of stills, and Tenement Films (Anna, David, Helen, Lester), (2009), a work consisting of four 16 mm films projected in a loop.
McCall, Fowler and Voïta and specifically the works presented in the show, share their experimental treatment of the moving image and the video-cinematic language. The exhibition deals with different ways to approach, think and process the image, three “frames of mind” that are an invitation to plunge in a real exercise of observation that goes beyond what is strictly visual.
Respecting the specificity of each work and far from establishing analogies or differences among them, Frames of Mind looks at three works, that, despite coming from very diverse artistic interests and contexts, present the three artists portraying their closest, familiar, even intimate environment. McCall, Fowler and Voïta experiment with photography, sound and cinematic media through different filming and camera devices, either using radical variations on the projection speed, overlapping and breaking up images and sounds, or creating optical illusions. A room interior, the artist studio or a private home are the subjects of the works. The objects and people appearing in the pictures are never shown in a flat, homogeneous, pure documentary portrait, rather a polyhedric, abstract view of what is depicted is offered. The result questions (to the artists themselves as well as to the audience) the perception of what we are observing. What we see in our everyday life is not necessarily known or lacking mystery. The three works in Frames of Mind, evidence the huge distance between what we see and what remains in our mind.
Anthony McCall’s work, a key figure of the avant-garde cinema in the United Kingdom in the seventies, is defined by its multidisciplinary dimension through the use of film, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance. Slit-Scan was the first of a series of slide projection historical works. A single vertical photograph divided up into narrow strips and distributed across 81 slides, is projected onto the wall at maximum speed (81 slides in 81 seconds), forming a single sweep of the original image from top to bottom. McCall refers to the “after-image” effect, so to say, the image retained in our brain once the real one is out of sight. The viewer may recreate the complete image by standing in front of the projection during its complete cycle. The sound produced by the device working at highest speed –resembling heartbeats- adds a mechanical pulse to the work, providing a certain dramatic condition. The perception of the image represented becomes complex, almost impossible, and it is precisely there, where the performative dimension of the work lays.
Luke Fowler’s work explores the limits and conventions of documentary filmmaking. Known for his impressionistic use of sound and image, he creates cinematographic portraits of people and situations which are central in his films. In 2008 he won the Film London Jarman Award and was commissioned to produce four short films: the Tenement Films (Anna, David, Helen, Lester). A series of portraits of four individuals brought together through a shared residence - a flat in a Victorian tenement in the West End of Glasgow. The films tell the story of the four people by recording the place they live in. For Fowler, space, light and process is more important than the traditional cinema’s interest in location, character and plot. Each subject is represented by a collage of image and sound weaving a web of associations that evokes the different personalities. Fowler is often defined as a documentalist, but his approach in Tenement Films is not that of an analyst but of someone questioning himself about the things observed. In the artist’s own words “I make films for people who are prepared to enter into a deeper relationship with the film and its subject”.
Bernard Voïta works with the photographic image, using his own studio to build images that only exist at the time they’re being recorded. The video piece Trax, is made up of a series of stills, randomly sequenced, where one image is slowly transitioning into the next. Every new image smoothly begins to reveal itself through a change in light. A slightly different structure is recognized but it is difficult to identify what exactly is reproduced in the picture. The images shown seem an abstract and unexplored landscape, but they are all taken at the artist’s studio. In Friedrich Meschede’s words: “Voïta’s studio is this empty space in which an image is invented, playfully improvised and furnished with the precision that stems from days of observation and thought. A close-up of the elements, which could make them suggest something other than what they are”.
Frames of Mind is an exhibition proposed by Patricia Dauder with the collaboration of José Buades and María Pose. Thank you to Anthony McCall, Luke Fowler and Bernard Voïta, and the galleries Thomas Zander (Cologne), The Modern Institute (Glasgow), and Bob van Orsouw (Zürich).
Frames of Mind
30 May - 10 September 2014
ProjecteSD is pleased to present Frames of Mind, an exhibition which brings together the work of three artists belonging to different generations: Anthony McCall (United Kingdom, 1946), Luke Fowler (Glasgow, Scotland, 1978) and Bernard Voïta (Cully, Switzerland, 1960). The works shown in the exhibition are Slit-Scan (1972), an installation based on the projection of eighty one slides at maximum speed, Trax (2005) a video made up of a series of stills, and Tenement Films (Anna, David, Helen, Lester), (2009), a work consisting of four 16 mm films projected in a loop.
McCall, Fowler and Voïta and specifically the works presented in the show, share their experimental treatment of the moving image and the video-cinematic language. The exhibition deals with different ways to approach, think and process the image, three “frames of mind” that are an invitation to plunge in a real exercise of observation that goes beyond what is strictly visual.
Respecting the specificity of each work and far from establishing analogies or differences among them, Frames of Mind looks at three works, that, despite coming from very diverse artistic interests and contexts, present the three artists portraying their closest, familiar, even intimate environment. McCall, Fowler and Voïta experiment with photography, sound and cinematic media through different filming and camera devices, either using radical variations on the projection speed, overlapping and breaking up images and sounds, or creating optical illusions. A room interior, the artist studio or a private home are the subjects of the works. The objects and people appearing in the pictures are never shown in a flat, homogeneous, pure documentary portrait, rather a polyhedric, abstract view of what is depicted is offered. The result questions (to the artists themselves as well as to the audience) the perception of what we are observing. What we see in our everyday life is not necessarily known or lacking mystery. The three works in Frames of Mind, evidence the huge distance between what we see and what remains in our mind.
Anthony McCall’s work, a key figure of the avant-garde cinema in the United Kingdom in the seventies, is defined by its multidisciplinary dimension through the use of film, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance. Slit-Scan was the first of a series of slide projection historical works. A single vertical photograph divided up into narrow strips and distributed across 81 slides, is projected onto the wall at maximum speed (81 slides in 81 seconds), forming a single sweep of the original image from top to bottom. McCall refers to the “after-image” effect, so to say, the image retained in our brain once the real one is out of sight. The viewer may recreate the complete image by standing in front of the projection during its complete cycle. The sound produced by the device working at highest speed –resembling heartbeats- adds a mechanical pulse to the work, providing a certain dramatic condition. The perception of the image represented becomes complex, almost impossible, and it is precisely there, where the performative dimension of the work lays.
Luke Fowler’s work explores the limits and conventions of documentary filmmaking. Known for his impressionistic use of sound and image, he creates cinematographic portraits of people and situations which are central in his films. In 2008 he won the Film London Jarman Award and was commissioned to produce four short films: the Tenement Films (Anna, David, Helen, Lester). A series of portraits of four individuals brought together through a shared residence - a flat in a Victorian tenement in the West End of Glasgow. The films tell the story of the four people by recording the place they live in. For Fowler, space, light and process is more important than the traditional cinema’s interest in location, character and plot. Each subject is represented by a collage of image and sound weaving a web of associations that evokes the different personalities. Fowler is often defined as a documentalist, but his approach in Tenement Films is not that of an analyst but of someone questioning himself about the things observed. In the artist’s own words “I make films for people who are prepared to enter into a deeper relationship with the film and its subject”.
Bernard Voïta works with the photographic image, using his own studio to build images that only exist at the time they’re being recorded. The video piece Trax, is made up of a series of stills, randomly sequenced, where one image is slowly transitioning into the next. Every new image smoothly begins to reveal itself through a change in light. A slightly different structure is recognized but it is difficult to identify what exactly is reproduced in the picture. The images shown seem an abstract and unexplored landscape, but they are all taken at the artist’s studio. In Friedrich Meschede’s words: “Voïta’s studio is this empty space in which an image is invented, playfully improvised and furnished with the precision that stems from days of observation and thought. A close-up of the elements, which could make them suggest something other than what they are”.
Frames of Mind is an exhibition proposed by Patricia Dauder with the collaboration of José Buades and María Pose. Thank you to Anthony McCall, Luke Fowler and Bernard Voïta, and the galleries Thomas Zander (Cologne), The Modern Institute (Glasgow), and Bob van Orsouw (Zürich).