David Claerbout (born 1969, Kortrijk, Belgium) is a Belgian artist working in the media of photography, video, sound, drawing and digital arts, though perhaps he is best known for his large scale video installations. His work exists at the meeting point between photography and film, and is at the forefront of this contemporary dialogue.
Claerbout studied at Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp from 1992-1995. He trained as a painter, but became more and more interested in time through investigations in the nature of photography, the still and the moving image (Bergson's duree echoed in Gilles Deleuze Cinema 1 and Cinema 2).
| “ | I have been painting and drawing since I was seven, and I must blame the art academy for perpetuating the idea that only painting could be art. That’s too heavy for me. I was looking for an art that didn’t consist of objects, so I taught myself film and photography.[1] | ” |
David Claerbout is represented in Paris by Yvon Lambert Gallery.[2]
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In early works such as Kindergarten Antonio Sant’Elia 1932 made in 1998 and the last in a series, he presents an old, black and white photograph as a large, mute projection. A moment frozen in time…Children playing in a courtyard… The trees gently swaying in the ‘non existent’ wind create an acute sense of the uncanny and challenging the viewer’s perception. In another, well known piece, Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (Reconstruction after Hiromishi Mine) (2001) time is suspended as an airplane caught by the camera moments before it’s crash, floats, the sunlight gently moving over the green and hilly landscape. In the book Visible Time, David Green writes: “What one actually experiences or indeed what one sees in this work, is not the conflation of photography and film but, a conjuncture of the two mediums in which neither ever loses its specificity. We are thus faced with a phenomenon in which two different mediums co-exist and seem to simultaneously occupy the same object. The projection screen here provides a point of intersection for both the photographic and filmic image.”[3]
With works such as Villa Corthout (2001) and Piano Player (2002), Claerbout’s work moves towards forms of narratives to describe ‘moments in time’ within the moving image, taking a more cinematic dimension. In the Bordeaux Piece (2004) actors repeat a given dialogue and a set of given movements, deconstructing cinematic time. The piece is in fact a 14 hours film made out of 70 shorter films shot at 10 minutes intervals throughout the day. The narrative slowly collapses, giving way to the movement of the sun over the landscape, architecture and people, thus creating a different temporality. In Sections of a Happy Moment (2007), Claerbout seems to ‘dissect’ a moment in the life of a Chinese family in the courtyard of a nondescript estate. A group of people are gathered around a ball suspended mid-air, all the faces turned towards it, smiling happily. Over the course of 25 minutes, this moment in time is analyzed from a multitude of different angles and perspectives, allowing the viewer an omnipresence that is paradoxical. The fragmentation of time in this piece, through freeze – frames of the same moment, creates 'visible duration'.[4] David Claerbout took part in the DAAD Berlin Artist Program in 2002-2003, has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions. Most recently, the George Pompidou Centre in Paris held a comprehensive solo exhibition (2007–2008). He is represented by: Galerie Micheline Szwajcer :[1] Yvon Lambert:[2] Hauser & Wirth : [3] Johnen Galerie : [4]
Single Channel Video Installation, Colour, Silent, 18’44”
Single Channel Video Installation, Black and White, Silent, 10’
Single Channel Video Installation, Black and White, Silent, 10’
Interactive Video Installation, Black and White, Silent
4 Light boxes, Cibachrome, Black and White
Video Installation, Colour, Silent, 3’30”
5 - Channel Video Installation, Black and White, Mono Sound, 25’
Video Installation, Colour, Silent, 36’
Single Channel Video Installation, Colour, Dolby Surround Sound, 7’
Double Screen Interactive Video Installation, Black and White, Silent
Single Channel Video Installation, Colour, Dual Mono Sound, 13:43’
Single Channel Video Installation, Black and White, Stereo Sound, 30’19”
Single Channel Video Installation, Black and White, Stereo Sound (Random Muzac), 25’57”
Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, 'After the Quiet', St. Gallen/Switzerland
Belkin Galleries at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens
Selected Monographs/ Exhibition Catalogues
Van Assche, Christine (ed.), 'The Shape of Time', Zürich: JRP Ringier/Centre Pompidou/MIT List Center of Visual Arts/De Pont Foundation/Kunstmuseum St. Gallen/Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2008 (exh.cat.)
National Museum of Contemporary Art (ed.), 'David Claerbout', Athens, 2008 (exh.cat.)
Gaensheimer, Susanne, Meschede, Friedrich et al. (ed.), 'David Claerbout', Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2004 (exh.cat.)
Green, David, Lowry, Joanna, 'Visible Time: The work of David Claerbout', Herbert Read Gallery, Brighton: Photoworks, 2004 (exh.cat.)
CGAC Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (ed.), 'David Claerbout' [texts by Stephan Berg, Rachel Kushner], Santiago de Compostela, 2003 (exh.cat.)
Kunstverein Hannover (ed.), 'David Claerbout', Brussels: A Prior, 2002 (exh.cat.)
Shows
Interview