6/12/2007
Pablo Zuleta Zahr
September, Berlin
Solo show. The video installation "Butterflyjackpot" brings four women together for the course of one day. The women did not know one another previously. Each of the women takes the others on a tour of her home city...
The SEPTEMBER gallery is mounting the first solo exhibition in Berlin devoted to the
photo and video artist Pablo Zuleta Zahr. The show is called BUTTERFLYJACKPOT. We
cordially invite you to the opening on December 7th beginning at 7 pm.
Pablo Zuleta Zahr's video installation BUTTERFLYJACKPOT brings four women together
for the course of one day. The women did not know one another previously. The artist
cast the actors, who come from four different cities in Belgium, Germany, and
Holland, on the Internet. The participants meet each other for the first time in
their lives and spend the day according to exact specifications. Each of the women
takes the others on a tour of her home city. She shows them her favorite sight and
her favorite restaurant, and subsequently invites them to her apartment. The scenes
were filmed with the artist's static camera and by one of the invited women using a
hand-held camera, but never by the hostess. As a result, the individual sequences
follow a temporal scheme based on the concept of the "golden cut." Each scene is
exactly 1.66 times as long as the previous one.
The four resulting "stories" are projected next to one another in a split-screen
procedure, eliciting a puzzled reaction from viewers. The four similarly clad and
similar-looking women swap roles in the respective encounters according to a
rotation principle that was worked out exactly. The temporal progression adheres to
a fixed symmetry. At the same time, deviations, disruptions, and technical problems
were consciously retained in the video.
While the "stories" fit together synchronously in some spots, and similarities
between places, people, movements, and camera angles give rise to an artificial déjà
vu experience, in other places virtual anarchical chaos breaks out. The title,
BUTTERFLYJACKPOT, refers to the "jackpot" hit by getting three identical pictures
next to each other on slot machines. In parallel, Zuleta Zahr takes the concept of
the "butterfly effect" from chaos theory as an allusion to the fact that even the
most tender movement can have massive, unforeseen effects on the structure of time
and space and on our relationships: "The beating of a butterfly's wings in the
Amazon can unleash a hurricane in Europe."
The incorporation of chance, which is one of Zuleta Zahr's filmic principles, is
reminiscent of the concept of indeterminacy which the avant-garde composer John Cage
implemented in countless variations. As a composer Cage withdrew behind his work,
whose genesis was no longer the result of subjective compositional decisions, but of
an objective moment - chance.
We are also happy to be able to show Pablo Zuleta Zahr's most recent photo series.
In it, the artist continues his examination of people in public places. While for
earlier photographic works he grouped people filmed by chance based on outer
criteria, now he sketches intimate psychographs in the Madrid subway.
Pablo Zuleta Zahr studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he was a Master
Student under Thomas Ruff. Since 2003, works by the 29-year-old Chilean artist have
been shown in numerous international exhibitions. BUTTERFLYJACKPOT was created in
the framework of the "After Cage" project in 2006 for the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
(NAK), and was shown by Studio La Città from Verona at the Art Unlimited 2007 in
Basel. Pablo Zuleta Zahr lives and works in Berlin.
Opening: Friday, 7 December, 7-9pm
September
Charlottenstrasse 1 - Berlin
Tues-Fri 11am-7pm, Sat 11am-6pm