#surface series

“In Christian Marclay’s moving-image event The Clock (2010), clips from the history of world cinema that indicate the passage of time are edited together in a mesmerizing montage, which spans a twenty-four-hour cycle and is synchronized with the local time of the exhibition space. As one watches the flow of cinematic time unfolding in real time in the rhythmic assemblage, the piece turns into a meditation on the relation of cinema to time as its material condition, and, by extension, to history. 

The architecture in which the work is sited recreates for the gallery goes the possibility of concretely inhabiting not only the time but also the space of cinema. An architectural hybrid of the white and the dark cube, the darkened gallery space provides couches on which to lounge, enabling viewers both to regain and to revitalize the experience of the cinematheque in an art space.”

“A series of photographs from 2005, Untitled (Barragan House), is particularly significant because in it Lambri tackles the extraordinary work of Luis Barragán, the Mexican architect for whom light was an architecture and who created his own brand of modernism by building with light surfaces and sculpting with vivid color. 

Focusing on a window of Barragán’s house in Mexico City, Luisa Lambri creates a sequence of experiential sensations of the intensity of space. In this series, the frame of the photograph incorporates the frame of the window, and the language of photography meets that or architecture in the creation of a conflated surface. Using the shutters as partitions, Lambri renders the environmental feeling of observing light filtering into the space of the house. Partially obscuring the fame, the shutters furthermore give volume to the flat photographic surface, which appress to comprise different and moving planes.”

“Pae White designed the stage curtain MetaFoil (2008) for the auditorium of the Oslo Opera House. When seen against the dark, timbered walls of the auditorium, designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta, this curtain, composed in different shades of gray, changes fantastically. Seen and touched up close, the fabric is flat. But when activated by the light of the auditorium, and perceived from a spectatorial position, the bidimensional plane of the textile is transformed into a plastic, three-dimensional material. 

The effect is made possible by a digital twist to traditional forms of weaving: White worked with digital images of aluminum foil and transferred them to a computer-driven loom. The resulting metalilic fabric has the texture of tapestry, and this “feel” of the fabric becomes enhanced by luminous effects. The stage curtain creates an actual foil when lit, offering the illusion of depth and the sensation of volume.”

“In Bill Morrison’s Decasia (2002), the film that is projected is actually wounded. Or rather, it shows as a wound. As we contemplate the effects of time, we ponder the injuries inflicted on the material. There are scratches, tears, lesions, and lacerations. The filmmaker insists on the abrasions, elaborating on the actual space of the wound.

The space of the stain in Decasia develops in relation to an exposure of texturality. The film insists on making us aware of the surface as well as the surfacing of images. In this passing, the mark of the stain is constantly made apparent, melancholically dwelt upon as it shows pictorially in toning, tinting, and pigmentation. There are smears and smudges, dots and blots, an impression of blotching and blackening.”

“In Anthony McCall’s 1973 Line Describing a Cone, a film is projected onto the wall of a darkened room: over the course of thirty minutes, a slim pencil of light emitted from the screen image slowly evolves into a large cone; the projection finally appears as a circle drawn on the screen, while the light fills the space with the appearance of three-dimensional form. As McCall notes, ‘This is what I term a solid light film... This film deals with one of the irreducible, necessary conditions of film: projected light.’

The work projects - that is, envisions, casts, transmits - “that dancing cone”: it takes time to unfold, and in such a durational way, slowly and irresistibly, makes you sense the materiality of filmic light. The dancing cone of light is experienced as a volume, sensed by the viewer as a sizeable entity. Thus given body and plasticity, filmic light becomes understood as a sculptural presence. Made to be experienced as a solid form, this luminous surface can turn into a place: it becomes a situational site to engage with.”

“In To Walk Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge, from 2004, Chantal Akerman dwells on a diary in which both her grandmother and her mother wrote, and that also bears marks from the time when her sister and she found it as children. In one part of the installation, a spiralling wall made of a white, diaphanous material evokes the properties of a screen or scrim, into which one can walk, and on which words from the artist as well as the diary are inscribed. 

In another room, a flat screen made of the same diaphanous material becomes the site of a three-part simultaneous projection and inscription of the writing of the women as different times. As the traces of the past are materialized in the present, the scrim holds a polyphony of experiences is sartorial fashion.”

“Chantal Akerman’s video installation Là-Bas (2006) makes compelling use of the screen as an architecture as it chronicles that artist’s trip to Tel Aviv. Static long takes enable us to wander around the interior of the apartment in which she is staying and observe a scene of little action inside. We can also see out the window, although not clearly. We are made to peek through blinds that are made of loosely woven reeds, which filter the light, and our vision.

What is portrayed here is nothing but a screen, and it is deliberately positioned between the world outside and us. Such a screen-partition forms a delicate physical boundary between inside and outside. It serves to both reveal and obscure our view of the city while, off-screen, we hear Akerman’s voice speaking in diaristic fashion about matters of daily life, filming, and a family diaspora, and never failing to answer her mother’s calls.”