Indiferença: Galeria Luisa Strina
Galeria Luisa Strina is pleased to present Indiferença [Indifference], the second solo show by artist Marcellvs L. at the gallery. Marcellvs L. was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and lives between Berlin and Sey_isfjör_ur. His exhibition will feature five recent and unpublished pieces: four video installations and one sound installation. The five works will be shown in the exhibition space in an orchestrated way, in a 56 minute loop.
The installation Light defining Light (2013), is composed of three distinct moments recorded between the summer and winter solstices of 2012 in Iceland. The basic question of this work is to put the gradual decrease of natural light into dialogue with the consequent amplification of electric light during the passage of the seasons, showing how natural light defines the artificial light and vice versa, contrary to the traditional opposition of light and darkness.
The work Specular (2013) was developed based on two videos recorded at the same river, but at different moments: at low tide, when the river is emptying, and at high tide, when the river is swelling. The position of the lens was slightly altered in each video, and projected in parallel the videos create an expanded landscape, but which initially looks like one image and its mirrored counterpart, revealing a certain doubt about the function of reflection.
The sound installation Balbakken, October – April 2012 – 2013 (2013) arose from a collaboration between Marcellvs L. and Norwegian artist Munan Øvrelid. To create this sonic work, the two artists began with studies made by Øvrelid, a retired mathematician, who spends part of his spare time observing birds. During the winter of 2012–2013 he methodically recorded the different actions of the birds in the tree in his yard: their relations with the alterations of temperature, the types and number of birds, the time and duration of their stay, and the amount of food distributed and eaten. These observations and calculations resulted in a graphic that summarizes the life around the tree during the winter.
Based on this information the artist duo composed seven sound pieces, corresponding to the months of October to April, based on the sounds of the respective birds organized according to a system of sonic translations carried out on the basis of the graphic of the birds’ behavior.
0720 (2012) and 9493 (2011) are two works that are part of the VídeoRizoma series, which the artist has been developing since January 2002. This series deals with the concept of the rhizome in a wide sense, extrapolating the fields of botany and philosophy, proposing an experience of the philosophical categories and the scientific functions.
The video 9493 shows a young man in a tent, camped in northwest of Iceland, playing a video game in the middle of a storm. The boy is concentrating on his game and completely indifferent to the reality around him, just as the reality of nature is completely indifferent to the reality of the boy. The work aims to explore this human indifference to an established and shared order moving in parallel to the indifference of nature in regard to man.
In 0720 the artist explores the question of how to give shape to the fundamental formlessness of reality. The electric light, as a human control and production, illuminates the movement of the snow under the fierce storm in the darkness.
