VIDEO PREMIERES AND FAVOURITES

Galeria Dels Àngels presents in its habitual space the video program Premieres and favourites , a selection of recent works by Ori Gersht, Alexandra Navratil, Jaime Pitarch, and Richard T. Walker as part of the festival LOOP'07.

The Forest , 2005, by British artist Ori Gersht (Tel Aviv, 1967) presents impressive images of the landscape and certain instants of tree felling in the large forest near Kolomyia, Ukrane. This piece, whose sequences where filmed directly outside thanks to a sophisticated technical support, connects conceptually with his known works Big Bang , 2006 and Pomegranate , 2006. These, works as well as, The Forest subtly suggest the inevitable relation between creation and destruction.

In The Extra , 2006, Alexandra Navratil (Zurich, 1978) critiques the excessive “star-systems” and the veneration of celebrities, focusing on the figure of the extra, this anonymous person that is always seen reflected by mirrors and who wants to be the protagonist of the spectacle. A figure, the extra , confronts three versions of himself: reflections of his image before two mirrors, placed so that they generate a view of four identical figures face to face around a table. The scenario recalls the usual scene of characters sitting around a table, at dinner or playing cards, where violence is about to come to a head. However, in The extra , the slow emotional changes of the character do not amount to a rise in the tension. There is no cause and effect.

Continuing in the line of dismembering everyday reality, reconstructing elements and searching for the equilibrium, Jaime Pitarch (Barcelona, 1963) presents the new work Rethinking David and Goliath , 2006, which captures the artist in the act of balancing a broom that has a globe hanging from it until, finally, the piece balances by itself, made possible by the counter-weight of the ball and done without artifice. Pitarch uses two distinct elements—a basic tool and a representation of the world—that are also united, placed in an interior space and joined by their equilibrium. The sequence of images—in real time—begin the initial scene with the pieces separated and the resulting object, thanks to a temporary stabilization, plays with the concepts of order, gravity and collapse, as well as the bewildering attempt to keep the world clean and sustained.

Richard T. Walker (Shropshire, UK, 1977) presents his latest video “A Nice View” in which he uses a fixed image of an ideal space, written words, spoken text and his own musical composition as tools to confront the different sentiments associated with the experience of landscape.

VIDEO PREMIERES AND FAVOURITES
Jaime Pitarch, Ori Gersht, Alexandra Navratil, Richard T. Walker