Arts Flanders

From 3 May 2012, the Wiener Secession will show Diese Sonne strahlt immer, an exhibition of David Claerbout's work.

David Claerbout works primarily in such time-based media as animation, video and sound, as well as photography. His contemplative projections trace the characteristics of these formerly independent media on the brink of disintegration. The works deliberately require tranquility and patience, often employing parallel arrangements like motion versus standstill, duration versus moment, evanescence and change versus permanence and continuity. In his first solo show in Austria, David Claerbout will present a selection of works, most of them recent. Diese Sonne strahlt immer refers to electric light as a replacement for sunlight. Claerbout is fascinated by how human perception will interpret footage filmed directly against the sun as 'intense', while in fact it is a feeble projected light beam reflected on an ordinary white wall. His works seem to regret the loss of sensory experience and yet his subjects include natural phenomena like reflection, wind and sunlight.

His early media-critical video works are based on appropriated photographs, e.g. Kindergarten Antonio Sant'Elia, 1932 (1998) while recent fictional films take the concept of the simultaneity of antagonisms a step further; the narrative recedes into the background, while natural phenomena that elude deliberate control, such as sunlight, become the real-time protagonists (see the thirteen-hour Bordeaux Piece, 2004). To immerse themselves in Claerbout's work, viewers accordingly need one thing above all else: plenty of time.

David Claerbout was born in Kortrijk, Belgium, in 1969. He now lives and works in Antwerp and Berlin.

The exhibition Diese Sonne strahlt immer is a cooperative venture with the government of Flanders.

David Claerbout
Diese Sonne strahlt immer
3 May – 17 June 2012

More info: www.secession.at - www.davidclaerbout.com