Fiona Tan
dal 19/9/2007 al 5/6/2008
Segnalato da
19/9/2007
Fiona Tan
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
80 Days. Film and video artist devoted to the theme of portrait. In collage fashion she combines documentary archive material, photographs and her own film footage to create pictorial sequences. In doing so, she blurs the distinction between documentation and fiction, between her own perceptions and those of others.
80 Days
The film and video artist Fiona Tan, who was born in Indonesia, grew up in Australia and now lives in Amsterdam, has devoted her work to the theme of the portrait. In collage fashion she combines documentary archive material, photographs and her own film footage to create pictorial sequences. In doing so, she blurs the distinction between documentation and fiction, between her own perceptions and those of others. The centrepiece of her exhibition conceived for the Pinakothek der Moderne and alluding in its title to Jules Verne's novel »Around the World in 80 Days« focuses on the questioning of historical and contemporary photography as a means of archiving the world.
In her film installation »Countenance« (2002) she presents some 200 full length portraits of people living in Berlin who have been categorised according to their different professions. Since the portrayed persons are frozen on camera, the film possesses the aesthetic quality of a sequence of photographs, a conscious reference to August Sander's portfolio work of the 1920's entitled »People of the Twentieth century«.
Tan transforms Sander's encyclopaedic approach into a socio-cultural study of inhabitants of a city shaped by the unification of East and West. In her group of works »Vox Populi«, begun in 2004, she unites images from three countries which simultaneously represent three continents. In Norway, Australia and Japan she sifted through hundreds of private photo albums, selecting pictures that were blended into a rhythmic wall tableau. These very private pictures stand for a collective need to capture particular moments from our own lives. In this way, the history and culture of a country is developed from a visual biography of collections of individuals.
The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Siemens Arts Program.http://www.siemensartsprogram.de. The exhibition is sponsored by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.
Image: Fiona Tan | Vox Populi, 2007, Fiona Tan | © Fiona Tan
Press conference 11 a.m.
Opening 7 p.m.
Pinakothek der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40 - Munich