c8400.comPassing Landscapes Lasting Sights (with Shin Kiwoun)statementJosef Bares + Shin Kiwoun: Passing Landscapes Lasting SightsEach work of art can be understood as a time-based work, if we consider it a record of the time it took to make it. This is very much exemplified in a simple line drawn on paper, where the starting point represents the starting time and the end point represents the end time. A painting is equally composed of different strokes and layers made in time. Photography and film, as well as video, further exemplified the fascination with time: now the time of the artwork could be manipulated and edited. Various time keeping devices developed through centuries show the quest to master time by measuring it. In the end, without a time-keeping device that allows for a regular repetitive recording and playback of film frames, no film would not be possible. Each film or video work thus contains something of the century old quest. Simultaneously measuring and recording devices become a memento mori, reminding us of that while time can be measured, it can never be stopped – our death is imminent. Bares' and Shin's are both concerned with the passing of time and use sequences of images to record landscapes and sights that appear in front of their eyes. The mechanistic, time-keeping function of the camera allows for a sampling from the continuous stream of appearances that, once viewed in the gallery, make us aware of the relationships between our individual sensory experience and the universal unstoppable flow of events. Shin uses the camera as an observation tool to frame a scene and capture the continuously changing qualities of light atmosphere during the day. Architectural elements in his video works are static, yet they are animated by the changes of natural light, making his work is reminiscent of John Constable's cloud sketches. One could also mention Chris Welsby’s early artist films as a possible point of reference. Welsby was also very much interested in the relationship between the mechanistic, time-keeping function of a camera and the natural flow of elements, cyclical but never completely predictable. Time flows steadily in Shin’s work, allowing us to observe what would otherwise be lost due to our permanent mobility and changing viewpoint. Bares also uses a camera to record image sequences of landscapes that surround him. However in his works, the changing viewpoint of a moving observer has become a predicate that shapes his oeuvre: The movement through landscape – an urban landscape - becomes the foundation of the work. The complexity of the viewing experience is further enhanced by an overlapping of individual frames, referencing the multiplicity of viewpoints and stimuli of a moving observer. The method, reminiscent of Idris Khan’s layered still photographs, obscures some of the details while strengthening the feeling of a movement that is both infinitely short (a blink of an eye) as well as infinitely long (a timeless memory). The strong visual impact reminds us of Tom Gunning’s concept of the cinema of attraction: Images that ‘move’ spectators through their movement rather than narrative or timeline editing. Both artist’s works are based in careful observation that is followed by an equally careful process of recording and editing. The works in the exhibition offer a selection of landscapes that passed by their eyes, while they were watching or while they were moving. Now these sights are frozen in time, not unlike the timeless memories that last in our mind after the landscapes in front of our eyes passed away. |