Riverside, 2009
What: DAVID CLAERBOUT
Where: HAUSER & WIRTH LONDON, 196A PICCADILLY, LONDON W1J 9DY
When: 22 MAY-1 AUGUST 2009, TUES - SAT 10AM - 6PM
How (much?): Free!
WHAT THEY SAY: Since the mid 1990s, David Claerbout has made extraordinary video installations, often combining moving and still images to unsettle the delineation between past and present. Impacting subtle philosophical reflections, his works are strikingly sensual, using every constitutive element available - pixel constellations, image sequences, speed, speech, music and ambient sound, installation environment and the technologies used to convey these - to elicit new modes of perceptual absorption.
WHAT WE SAY: There are three video-audio installations: Riverside, an impaired journey of a man and a woman; Sunrise, a pitch-dark voyeuristic experience of a maid that ends with a blinding light; and, The American Room (1st Movement), an intimate piano concert where time freezes before the singer begins the singing. Claerbout’s works serve as a refuge for West End wanderers. Watching - or, more likely, listening - to Claerbout’s is an absolute form of escapism. Claerbout fuses the incomplete visual storyline with flawlessly creative audio precision. The sound is essentially his main vehicle to recount the story - be it the flowing streams, the rustling tree, the early morning cycling, the wiping off the table, the score, can’t be any more real and as if within grasp. The installations transport us, or rather kidnap us, from the bustling city, block and blind us from the stress, the unintelligible, polluted noise. They are powerful, and they obstruct and re-arrange our sense of perception.
VERDICT: A world-class visual and auditory cleansing that is not to be missed.
Words: Poonperm Paitayawat