David Claerbout

David Claerbout (Kortrijk, 1969) can be counted among today´s youngest talents in the field of artistic video production. Originally trained as a painter, the artist utilizes in his installations either overlays from static slide images and subtly moving video projections or straight video projections, which sometimes react via sensors to the movements of the visitors. Claerbout creates tension stemming from the apparent immobility of precise compositional images which are then partially broken up. The mechanically reproduced eternity of the single photographic image turns into a surreal movement with all the logic of a dream, giving life back to the `frozen´ image which was taken away from it by the vampire-like photographic process.

Venice lightboxes display architectural views of Venice by night. Slowly becoming visible from the darkness, these images present the picture of a sinking city.

Rocking Chair shows a woman sitting in a chair on a porch. She rocks slowly in the chair, lending the image a subtle, almost imperceptible air of animated life. When the viewer walks around to the other side of the screen, he finds himself `inside´ the house " suddenly viewing the same scene but in reverse.

In Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (Reconstruction after Hiromishi Mine), the plane shot down during the Vietnam war comes from a famous black and white photograph taken by the war reporter Hiroshimi Mine. The landscape was filmed by Claerbout forty years later.

In the video installation titled Four Persons Standing, four figures, taken from various photographic sources that the artist digitally collaged together, are framed by the architecture behind them, There is a charged suggestion of narrative emanating from the image, and a fraught, mysterious dynamic between these four figures.

The Piano Player appears to be an excerpt of a longer movie. A woman walks home through he pouring rain. When she enters her house piano music in the background develops into its own spatial dynamics.

David Claerbout
Kurator: Stephan Berg