Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
http://www.belkin.ubc.ca
Extended Viewing Hours:
Bordeaux Piece, 2004 (13 hr 43 min) will be presented in its entirety:
7 am to 9 pm on Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by the Belgian artist David Claerbout. The exhibition will transform the gallery to show a selection of video installations that date from 1996 to the present.
David Claerbout draws on the conventions of film, photography, and digital media, challenging boundaries by combining traditional technologies in the production of his works. His works defy the expectations of the viewer, as he manipulates still photographs to introduce movement, subtly accelerates or decelerates his films, edits separate recordings together, and often employs narratives that become a secondary feature to the work. What is central to the artist’s work is the nature of time. Claerbout frequently introduces natural elements—such as sunlight and darkness—as anchor points for the perception of time.
The exhibition includes Claerbout’s Bordeaux Piece (2004), which is nearly 14 hours in length, and comprised of 70 short films shot by the artist at 10 minute intervals between 5:30 am and 10:00 pm over the course of several days. Actors play out the same scripted scene over and over, while the slow movement of daylight across the set becomes the organizing principle in the work, and as Claerbout explains, “gives form to duration by means of natural light.”
David Claerbout was born in 1969 in Kortrjik, Belgium, and lives and works in Antwerp. Since the late 1990s, his work has been exhibited widely in international institutions and included in public collections such as Sammlung Goetz, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, De Pont Foundation, Boijmans van Beuningen, Hamburger Bahnhof, Centre Georges Pompidou Musée National d’Art Moderne.
This exhibition is curated by Scott Watson and is a collaboration with the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The exhibition catalogue was produced with the Centre Georges Pompidou.
For more information contact Naomi Sawada at (604) 822-3640 or [email protected]
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 1825 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada. http://www.belkin.ubc.ca
Image above:
Still from “Bordeaux Piece,” 2004
Single channel video installation, colour, PAL, 2 channel audio, 3 hours 43 minutes
Courtesy of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada
For more information go to: http://www.belkin.ubc.ca
