The Paper has learned that the new exhibition "Video at Large – Intimacy" at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing was held yesterday in the form of a cloud opening. The exhibition selects 16 works from the numerous video collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Paris, including many winners of the Venice Biennale, to explore the theme of "intimacy" from different degrees. The opening of this exhibition also marks the official opening of the 16th Sino-French Cultural Spring.
Presented by the Red Brick Museum in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, "from preparation to landing, the two sides have experienced a difficult, difficult and imaginative 'intimate relationship' across time and space, and built a time and space tunnel of video art in the Red Brick Museum, exploring how the audience perceives the intimate relationship composed of images and installation works in an immersive space." Yan Shijie, director of the Red Brick Art Museum, said at a press conference.
Fabris Helgot, director of the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris (left), and Jessica Castrox, one of the curators of the exhibition (right)
Fabris Hergot, director of the Modern Museum in Paris, France, said in a subsequent speech that the works exhibited this time are a very important part of the 15,000 collections of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, "The works we have selected this time so that the audience in Beijing can see are very bold and very artistic works, which show you a variety of different ideas and themes through different channels and different artistic means of expression." ”
The exhibition "Free Images – Intimacy" is curated by Odil Bullulo and Jessica Castex, curators of the Musée Moderne de Paris. At the opening ceremony, the two curators discussed the theme of "intimacy" from different perspectives. The word "intimacy," derived from the Latin word "intimacy," is the most intimate part of everyone's heart, including our thoughts, emotions, bodies, and all the relationships that make up our existence. "But since the advent of reality shows and the web in the early 2000s, a whole new change is taking shape, and the concept of 'what is intimacy' has changed dramatically, and we even share this intimacy with many strangers." The exhibition "Free Image – Intimacy" attempts to capture this change and present various concepts of intimacy.
"Privacy rooted in home and community spaces"
Tracing back to its roots, the exhibition first presents privacy rooted in the space of home and community, introduced by Ange Leccia's Sabatina, which opens the entrance to "intimacy" for the viewer. The film is shot in a bathtub, with the floating face of a young girl watching us, forming an intimate portrait of the artist's daughter.
Exhibition scene, Angel Lycha, Sabattina, 1996
In the first half of the exhibition, the intimate relationships in an individual's daily family life are shown in the form of bathtubs (Angel Lycha's Sabattina), kitchens (Mariam Bennani's The Kingdom of Graduals), or pet cats and dogs (Peter Fitzli and David Wise's Cats, Dogs).
On display, Peter Fitzley and David Wise, Cats, 2001, Dogs, 2003
Exhibition scene, Mariam Bennani, The Gradual Kingdom, 2015-2016
Intimate relationships are both a personal possession and a connection with others, a common experience. Christian Poltansky is one of the artists who is best able to conceptualize the universality of intimate relationships, and his work Between Time and Space shows the artist's life based on traces of life, individual and collective memories. With the development of social media and digitalization, intimacy is increasingly shared, and the use of curtains in works makes this transformation concrete. His images refer to all stages of life, changing the way we look at intimate relationships by exploring an inner portrait of the individual.
Christian Portansky, Between Time and Space, 2003, back projection, 2 minutes and 12 seconds, black and white silent Christian Poltansky
The theme of the exhibition goes from shallow to deep with the depth of the scene, and the audience will gradually think about the pressure brought by the media and the protection of personal privacy under this pressure as the work goes. A pioneer in the exploration of this scale change, Gillian Weiying's 2000 film was one of the first digital works to publicly demonstrate intimacy. In her work Trauma, Wei Ying staged a face-to-face reality show in the cubicle. Eight interviewees were invited to speak in front of camera about traumatic experiences that took place in their childhoods. Each wore a plastic mask that mimicked the facial features of a sad child, as well as a synthetic fibre wig. This outfit, as an almost terrifying mockery, comically and painfully evokes an imaginary childhood, which is full of personal drama elements.
Gillian Weiying, Trauma, 2000, Video on the Monitor, 28 minutes, color with sound, picture courtesy of Maureen Pelle gallery in London, Gillian Weiying
At the same time, people's multiple images online have led to a constant replication of identities. The new generation that grew up with the advent of social media placed special emphasis on the resulting anxiety, which also allowed our intimacy to extend on the "geographical" landscape through the development of social media and multimedia. Ryan Trekadin's film I-Be Domain presents a string of sitcom and reality TV-inspired characters, exaggerating the self-expression that has been propelled to the climax by today's new ways of communicating. These seemingly improvisational lines, created by artist Ding himself, reveal the stereotypes of young people and recreate the exploration of identity in the transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Ryan Trekartin, I-Be Domain, 2007, Image Projection, 108 points, color with sound, image courtesy of the artist and the Schbutter-Marger Gallery in Berlin
"In isolation, triggering reflection and desire for intimacy"
Reflections on this intimate space are best reflected in this exhibition in the video installation Zidane: Portraits of the 21st Century by Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, which fundamentally alters our intimate spaces.
A masterpiece of the video collection of the Musée d'Arte Moderne in Paris, the film Zidane: Portraits of the 21st Century follows French star Zinedine Zidane in real time at a 2005 match. The 90-minute film features shaky footage of the football superstar's tracks, interspersed with inexplicable television footage and "stream-of-consciousness" footage. This raises the question of how we can protect ourselves when the development of media and technology further spreads the idea of intimacy and thus brings one's life to the fullest for all.
Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Zidane: Portraits of the 21st Century, 2006
Regarding the form of expression of the exhibition, curator Jessica Castex said: "As the title of this exhibition focuses on the concepts of 'dimension', 'extension' and 'scale', reflecting the different forms and characteristics of contemporary video installations, including architectural elements, sculptures, furniture, multi-screen and other media, which together construct an environment. These collections create a library of symbols while generating narratives that allow the viewer to engage and fully interact. ”
Curator Odile Burluy sees this exhibition across China and France as an opportunity to constantly renew herself, "The collaboration with the Red Brick Museum also allows us to raise new questions and challenges to these video collections of the Musée Dei Moderne in Paris, and to rethink the themes represented by the collection, such as this time artist Charlotte Moss reimagined her visual works with Chinese sculptures, and engaged in dialogue with the space of the Red Brick Museum." ”
Charlotte Moss, "Lady with a Shell, Twice: The Storeroom", 2017
Exhibition scene, Charlotte Moss, "Lady with a Shell, Twice: The Storeroom"
In the online Q&A session, Yan Shijie, director of the Red Brick Art Museum, told the surging news reporter that he was also isolating in Xingtai at the moment. "Everyone is in a phase of physical isolation, and it can be said that the entire earth is isolated. Two years ago, in the face of the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, the Red Brick Art Museum held the '2020+' exhibition, using the narrative and expression of the artist's works to think about what the epidemic will bring us. With the recurrence of the epidemic, humanity has actually reached a crossroads, facing all kinds of 'disorder', every person, every institution, and even a country is looking for a new and effective governance, effective communication, or building a new order. ”
"In a sense, this exhibition 'Free Images: Intimate Relationships' breaks through the isolation through the connection of the network, and we establish communication through satellites in the sky and cables on the seabed. In fact, only in isolation can we trigger our reflection and desire for intimacy, and the greater depression, greater need, and greater energy it brings. Yan Shijie said.
The exhibition will run until 3 July.