22/4/2010
Rineke Dijkstra
Jan Mot, Bruxelles
Liverpool
Rineke Dijkstra's (NL, 1959) upcoming show at Jan Mot includes two works: The Weeping Woman, Tate Liverpool (2009), a three channel video projection and Ruth Drawing Picasso, Tate Liverpool (2009), a single channel video projection. Both works were produced in the past year at the Tate Liverpool and portray school pupils in a revealing and fascinating way.
The video installations follow Rineke Dijkstra's artistic research on the specific characteristics of individuals in a group contexts and the paradox between identity and uniformity. By creating her work, Rineke Dijkstra concentrates on poses, attitudes, gestures and glances to reveal the authentic core of individuals and to identify the aspects in which they differ from each other.
The Weeping Woman shows a class of young pupils in their uniforms, loosely arranged and facing the three cameras recording the scene. The pupils appear as a group on their own since their focus is not the cameras but the painting Weeping Woman by Pablo Picasso, 1937. After some moments of silence the children slowly and wary start describing what they see on the painting. From merely formal observations their descriptions shift more and more towards the question what might have been the cause for the woman's weeping until their imaginations run free, and they start dreaming up all sorts of stories for the setting of the painted scene. Parallel to this process the attention of the pupils moves slowly from the painting to the members of group; they start turning around, look at and address their remarks to each other. The three-channel display responds to the scene attentively by zooming in and out, focussing different individuals, shifting images across
each other or displacing them. Over the course of the video the specific dynamic of the portrayed group and the relationship between the group members clarifies gradually; single individuals can influence the group without noticing it and others are completely ignored with their remarks, gestures and glances indicate who in the group might be friends.
In Ruth Drawing Picasso Rineke Dijkstra portrays a young schoolgirl sitting on a gallery's floor making a drawing of a Picasso painting. In contrast to The Weeping Woman the observations of the girl stay hidden for the spectator since he cannot see what she is actually drawing. Instead one can follow the movement of her hand with the pencil and her eyes quickly moving back and forth from the painting to the drawing pad. By other children partly looming into the picture it becomes obvious that there are also other pupils drawing next to her. Occasionally the portrayed girl is gazing to her neighbours, smiling gently or exchanging pens with them. Nevertheless it seems that this setting is not distracting the girl in its keen but also quiet and peaceful commitment to the drawing - an authentic and uninhibited moment characteristic of Rineke Dijkstra's work.
Image: 'Park Portraits: Prospect Park', Brooklyn, July 23, 2006, 2006, C-Print, framed, 123,6 x 146 cm, ed. of 10
Opening 23/04, 6-10pm
Jan Mot
Rue Antoine Dansaertstraat 190 BE-1000 Brussels