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15/6/2004

Two exhibitions

T1+2 Gallery, London

Eva Bensasson
Revenants

Eva Bensasson's Revenants is a collection of works involving digitally manipulated photographs, and a large wall-mounted lightbox. Bensasson takes as her source material photographs of gatherings (small or large) of people at a variety of familiar, and sometimes unfamiliar, locations: concerts, festivals, political demonstrations, queues at the cafe, airports, hospitals, railway stations or restaurants - and works on these images digitally or by other means. Removing the figures from a specific scene or, more exactly, highlighting them by filling in their forms with a solid but emphatically flat blackness, Bensasson encourages the viewer to consider issues of selfhood and identity, anonymity and collectivity, the self and the other, presence and absence. Keeping in this vivid form the starkly delineated gestures and "edges" of the body, Revenants proposes that we contemplate how the individual relates to the broader mass, fitting into the crowd or standing apart from it as archetype or unacknowleged participant in a particular historical moment or event.

These works involving the removal of the idiosyncratic traits of individual characters are accompanied by others in which the details of the site at which such people were photographed are themselves erased. Removing the contextualising elements of any given scene throws the individuals involved into a state of studied disarray. Left in a state of disconnection, floating among others similarly disengaged from the now absent scene, these erstwhile purposeful subjects convey to the viewer something comical but also disturbing: their own potential absence, erasure, "de-individualisation" at an unspecified future time.

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Manuel Saiz
Nominal_Politics

T1+2 Artspace is pleased to host Nominal_Politics, a selection of recent works by Manuel Saiz. Saiz works in a variety of media, employing performance, video and installation, using these means to address issues involving the nature of politics, and in particular how "the political" is today constituted, managed and presented.

Countdown by Fallback utilises 28 incandescent lamps presented so as to echo the shape of a 4-digit electronic display board, accompanied by 28 switches arranged in the same formation. These may be activated by a participant in the gallery space. The piece also includes a monitor displaying a countdown from 9999 - 0000, with the actual numbers generated by the participant being shown as they are produced.

Retronym is a handmade device involving a black paper ribbon held between 2 rollers. A handle allows the ribbon to be turned in an endless loop. On the ribbon are, painted in a manner mimicking that of electronic displays, the words: " IS IT POLITICAL AN UNCOMMON USE OF TECHNOLOGY?."

Grief Management is made up of a soundproof but transparent vitrine in which has been placed a monitor containing a small extract from the Ingmar Bergman film Fanny and Alexander. The vitrine may be opened by the viewer, allowing the film loop's soundtrack to be heard at high volume. The section from Bergman involves a woman wailing loudly as she contemplates her husband's coffin.

All Resistance is Useless is a video documenting a single person demonstrating on a deserted street. A precarious mechanical structure made from trolleys and pushchairs carries placards bearing the words "WE ARE THE PEOPLE", whilst portable cassette players audibly reproduce the same sentence.

Manuel Saiz is also currently showing at the East End Academy exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Image: Manuel Saiz

Private View: Wed 16 June 2004, 7 - 9pm.

Exhibition Dates:.17 June - 16 July 2004. Gallery hours: 11am - 6pm, Wed - Sun

t1+2artspace
4 Steward St, London E1. Nearest tube: Liverpool St.

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