I Summon You
dal 12/6/2002 al 16/6/2002
Segnalato da
12/6/2002
I Summon You
Dingley Gallery, London
A video installation by Klaus Wehner. This video installation is an animated re-staging of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, which famously depicts the moment of anger and disbelief amongst the disciples, after Christ announced that his traitor is amongst these present. All disciples are impersonated by Wehner himself.
I Summon You, a video installation by Klaus Wehner
The Dingley Gallery is pleased to announce that we will be showing Klaus
Wehner's video installation I Summon You for the brief period of four days
only, starting on the 13th June 2002. This will mark a much welcome return
of this artist to the Dingley Gallery, where he has been part of the
successful Clean Bodies exhibition in February 2001.
I Summon You was shown for the first time at EAST International in
Norwich last year, which was selected by Mary Kelly and Peter Wollen.
This video installation is an animated re-staging of Leonardo da Vinci's Last
Supper, which famously depicts the moment of anger and disbelief amongst
the disciples, after Christ announced that his traitor is amongst these
present. All disciples are impersonated by Wehner himself. A most blatant
change to Leonardo's original is the absence of Christ leaving a conspicuous
gap in the centre of the table. Gallery visitors are confronted with a loud and
ambiguous scene, hovering between humorous absurdity and hopeless
futility. The viewer is left to contemplate whether Christ abandoned the
disciples or the disciples abandoned him. Similarly it is questionable if the
disciples enjoy and celebrate or bemoan and suffer the absence of their
leader.
As in all of Wehner's work, the concern is ultimately that of human spiritual
needs and anxieties in the face of bodily transience and mortality. Here, the
absence of Christ can be seen as a symbolical absence of a Super Ego,
which can serve as a metaphor for the contemporary phenomenon of a loss
of faith in the traditional religion in the Western world, and in a wider sense,
for the loss of meta narratives that have governed various aspects of
spiritual life in Western Europe for centuries. If seen from this point of
view, attention also shifts from the actual depicted scene to the role of art as
a replacement for, rather than an ally of religion.
Da Vinci's Last Supper is one of the most famous as well as most copied
pieces of religious art of the Western world. It could almost be said that
Klaus Wehner has joined this 'tradition' of copies and re-workings, not only
to remind one of underpinning issues and values relating to the original, but
also to create a version, contemporary in medium and content, that queries
on the climate of today's spiritual environment.
Private view: 13th June 2002, 6-9pm
13th + 14th + 15th + 16th June 2002, 12-6pm
I Summon You, 5 mins. looped, life-size video projection with sound in dark space
Dingley Gallery
3 Dingley Place
London EC1 V8BP
Tel: 07974 767 211