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DAVID CLAERBOUT at Secession in Vienna
May 3 – Jun 17, 2012
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The Belgian artist David Claerbout works primarily in photography, animation, and video. His contemplative installations study the qualities of these media, often employing them in parallel arrangements: motion versus standstill, duration versus moment, evanescence and change versus permanence and continuity. His artistic practice revolves around the passage of time, and slowness and precision are distinguishing features of his work. Many of his video works are based on historic photographs, to which he adds a dimension of time and motion by means of digital manipulation; see, for instance, his Kindergarten Antonio Sant’Elia, 1932 (1998). In the viewer, the simultaneous presence of contrary phenomena inevitably triggers a perceptional irritation. Claerbout’s fictional films take the concept of the simultaneity of antagonisms a step further; the narrative recedes into the background as natural phenomena that elude deliberate control, such as the sunlight, become the real-time protagonists (see the thirteen-hour Bordeaux Piece, 2004). The artist plays with the expectations the viewers’ visual habits generate, teasing them to the point where the semblance of stasis becomes a painful experience. To immerse themselves in Claerbout’s work, viewers accordingly need one thing above all else: plenty of time.
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