Neil Beloufa
dal 30/3/2014 al 23/5/2014
Segnalato da
30/3/2014
Neil Beloufa
Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard, Paris
The artist experiments with animation, with a lively hypertrophy of displays, with a sense of indistinction between frame and that which is framed. "En torrent et second jour" works through a messy notion of realism and mimesis, where figures and grounds, messages and interfaces camouflage each other.
Curated by Mihnea Mircan
Neïl Beloufa’s video works do not so much deconstruct filmic conventions, as they un-build them, tear apart and reassemble the cinematic apparatus into new continuities.
His characters inhabit precarious stages, meant to obstruct or artificially extend the movements of the camera, rather than accommodate narratives of transformation.
Panning shots, dialogues, half-gestures, segmented or cloned scenographies fictionalize each other to a point of cinematic selfdisplay: the artist’s counterpart for our expectation of a climactic moment, a methodical pursuit of what makes an artifice – on- or offscreen– an artifice. This logic of dismantling extends into the environments he constructs around his moving images – a montage of sculptural translations and unsteady equivalents, of material‘stills’ from a process not unlike his handling of video techniques and histories.
It is these installation correlates – Beloufa’s labyrinthine, frustrating ‘projection rooms’, or, seen differently, his unsettlingly palpable, sculptural making-of’s – whose syntax and role are reversed in the artist’s project for the Fondation Ricard. Never at ease with their status as props, these objects will be activated and documented, moved and movied, allowed to outgrow any clear distinctions of figure, ground and importance. Usurping a centre-stage position, their ambiguous place between functionality and obstruction is intensified and emphasized. The interface embodies and takes over the role of protagonist: the converse of a Pygmalion moment – where the pedestal would come alive –, or echo of modern anxieties about a conspiracy of screens, progressively encroaching upon the bodies and souls of viewers. Neïl Beloufa experiments with animation, with a lively hypertrophy of displays, with a sense of indistinction between frame and that which is framed.
‘En torrent et second jour’ works through a messy notion of realism and mimesis, where figures and grounds, messages and interfaces camouflage each other. The mimetic equation – that held together films and the sculptural assemblages ostensibly made for their viewing – expands into another, abstract mimesis, that links unstable images and unclear users, competing for meaning and emptying each other of time.
Mihnea Mircan, February 2014
Opening on Monday, March 31, 2014
Fondation d'entreprise Ricard
12, rue Boissy d'Anglas - 75008 - Paris, France
Tuesday to Saturday
Free admission, from 11 am to 7 pm
Guided tours:
Wednesday at 12:30 pm
Saturday 12:30 pm and 4:00 pm
Closing : Monday and public holidays.