Marcellvs L.
Press Information
13th January – 17th February 2007, Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Vernissage: Friday, 12th January 2007, 6 p.m.
We are delighted to announce Marcellvs L.’s first gallery exhibition at
carlier | gebauer.
In his works Brazilian video-artist Marcellvs L. (*1980, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil) slows down time, creating a tangible physical staging of time. He
sets the most commonplace objects in a filmic modus of duration, seemingly
detached from reality: a rope moves in water (“rope”), a man walks along a
street, wind blows through leaves, a boat moves slowly to and fro (“ebbing.
flowing”).
Despite digital retouching processes, Marcellvs L. forges on with an
aesthetic of the raw visual material, asserting, through the pixels and
electrons that remain visible, its status as incidental, unfinished. The
contingency of what is depicted or filmed is reiterated, subtly staged, on
the representational level. This two-pronged approach underscores the
process- and event-oriented nature of his films; nothing happens in these
works, which have a radically anti-narrative structure. The actual event is
the extension of time, while duration is the real protagonist. Marcellvs L.
banks provocatively on the patience of the viewer, compelled to wait, only
to discover the waiting has been in vain, realising ultimately that the
focus is actually on a heightened form of his or her own attention and
perception.
Generating a permanent delay however has nothing to do with deprivation in
the Beckettian sense of the term: the time that does not pass constructs a
locus that is not just an interface between the unconscious and reality,
but instead allows perception to take on physical form. This physicality,
produced by the sound and rhythm of the films too, makes the videos into
passages for the viewer, turns the films into a space of transit in which
he or she is confronted with the potential of what is possible.
The videos focus on details devoid of context that determine the image. The
minimal content contained in the minimalist film image – the videos border
on abstraction and operate with vanishing contours – does not even allow
representation to occur; it becomes one with the surface of the expanded
time.
In the “VideoRhizome” series he has been working on since 2002 – the title
highlights the reference to Deleuze/Guattari – Marcellvs L. has developed a
concept of infection and action as components of his art. The 2,480 tapes
sent at random to households around the world since 2002, with no indica-
tion the sender’s identity, are rooted in the conviction that time is
political. The uncontrollable circulation of the filmed extension of time,
disseminated and spreading the risk of contagion as widely as possible,
relies on the subversive strategies of Actionism – and the outcome is
unclear.
Exhibitions | prizes (a selection):
2006: 27th International Biennale Sao Paulo, Brazil; 19th Images Festival Film & Video, New Media, Toronto, Canada; 17th Ankara International Film Festival, Ankara, Turkey; Paris Tout Court, 4th Festival International du Film,
Paris, France; Nomination Nam June Paik Award 2006, Grand Prize 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2005; Best Experimental Film, International Short Film Festival Rio de Janeiro 2004.
For detailed press information and photos, please contactus by phone +49 (0) 30 240 85 211.