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13/2/2007

Sam Taylor-Wood

Stuk Kunstencentrum, Leuven

Since the mid 1990s Sam Taylor-Wood has been a permanent and strong presence at the international art scene. With her films and photographs she confronts us with compelling psychological portraits and strongly symbolic compositions. What makes her work so special, are the direct, strong visual images that appeal at first glance. The almost magical images furthermore comprise various deeper layers of meaning, which are left to the public to interpret.

In her work Taylor-Wood focuses on themes such as vulnerability, public versus personal experiences and the isolation of individual people in our contemporary society. An early work of her that is still often screened, is the film Brontosaurus (1995), in which a naked man dances in slow motion to classical music. In the series of panoramic photographs Five Revolutionary Seconds we see figures in set-up interiors that do not interact with each other, but like still lifes seem to lead an autonomously existence. The artist has also made various film installations with several screens, from which the characters communicate with each other—or talk at cross-purposes. What strikes us, are the detailed scenarios and the focus on the emotional life of the protagonists. The tense situations she depicts are therefore often enigmatic and enchanting. A few years ago, she portrayed a series of celebrities, including football player David Beckham and various Hollywood actors. In these works she explores identity, performance, play and reality.

STUK presents a solo exhibition that focuses on Sam Taylor-Wood's recent films and photographs. The leitmotif of the exhibition is the frailty of the characters she portrays, both physically and emotionally. The images she creates are both statical and dynamic, and refer to the history of art, to religious iconography and the longing to transcend human limits. Her portraits of people moving—dancing, making music, balancing—are not narrative; these people communicate through their body and through music, rather than through language. It could be argued that the artist captures stills of experiences, hypnotising fragments of an often contradictory experience of time.

The three films, Ascension, Strings and Prelude in Air are presented on monumental screens in the STUK. For Prelude in Air (2005) the artist filmed a musician playing Bach. During his virtuoso performance the musician seems to be one with his instrument, yet the cello seems to be absent. The musician's surrendering to the music and his instrument thus become central in this work.

InAscension (2003) the protagonist tap dances in tailor-made suit with a pigeon on his shoulder. Tap dance combines grace with skill in a permanent play of escaping from and being subject to gravity. Ascension is a poignant composition about the relation between body and mind, which in this instance is not viewed as something supernatural, but as a daily human experience. Because of the rhythm and tenseness, the film seems to depict an animated medieval scene, with the vertical dancer on the horizontal body of the deceased. This tap dance is like a danse macabre that is both subdued and appears a popular, almost comical performance. As such, Ascension combines popular and religious elements in an ode to the body.

The title Strings (2003) refers both to the strings of musical instruments and the strings the dancer is suspended from in this performance. Dancer Ivan Putrov, the male star dancer of the London Royal Ballet, is presented in this films as a trapeze artist, suspended above four musicians playing Tchaikovsky's second string quartet. Yet Putrov's movements are not synchronous with the music. Taylor-Wood seems to dissociate the building blocks of the film—soundtrack and images—to draw our attention to the status of both of them. Because of the limited movements to which the dancer is restricted, it is as if he swims in the air. The asynchronous movements also refer to the gap that separates dancer and musicians. The fact that both seem to live in a world of their own, lends the work a certain humour and pathos, but also something ritual, which is emphasised by the classical, claustrophobic setting.

With The Leap (2001), a snapshot of a man floating in midair, the artist introduces weightlessness in her work, a concept she later meticulously elaborates on in the self-portraits. Apart from The Leap, the STUK presents three photographs from the series Bram Stoker’s Chair (2005). In these series the artist is photographed balancing on the edge of a chair. The ropes from which she dangled, were later removed by retouching. Unlike in Strings, in which the ballet dancer seems to be caught in his movements, Taylor-Woods looks relaxed and vulnerable at the same time, surrendering to gravity. The theatrical lighting casts a well-defined shadow on the wall. The chair itself, however, is without shadow—a reference to the immortal Count Dracula. The portraits provide a paradoxical image of unrestrained freedom. The dark edge they all have, is like a window that allows a glimpse of another dimension, of life after death.

Sam Taylor-Wood (born 1967, London) graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1990. Early in the following decade, she became involved with the YBAs, the Young British Artists. In 1997 she received the prize for the Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale and she was nominated for the Turner Prize. Her work has been on view at several biennales and international solo exhibitions in e.g. the Hayward Gallery (London), the State Russian Museum (St Petersburg), the Kunsthalle (Zürich), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington), the Fondazione Prada (Milan). Her most recent exhibitions were at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, in the BALTIC in Newcastle and the MOMA in New York.

Eva Wittocx, curator of the exhibition, conducts a tour of the exhibition on March 11 at 1.00 p.m and on March 22 at 7.00 p.m.. To participate, please telephone the STUK Reception at +32 16 320 320.

The exhibition is a part of the Artefact Festival for new media (http://www.artefact-festival.be).

On the occasion of this exhibition, art historian Etienne Van den Bergh will give a lecture on Sam Taylor-Wood's work on February 21, at 9 p.m. Admission is free. The lecture is organised in collaboration with the Cultural Service of the Catholic University Leuven.

Stuk Kunstencentrum
Naamsestraat 96. B-3000 Leuven BE 411 973 450

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