| AS] IN |
| Art vidéo | dv | color | 3'35'' | USA / Belgium | 2007 |
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© courtesy Argos (Brussels)
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The interior of an empty office building in Zaventem’s Corporate Village, next to Brussels Airport. Human presence is only to be found outside, through the windows, in the passing cars or close-by office buildings. Using fluid camera movements, travellings as well as panoramics, Downsbrough scrutinizes the environment, exploring the possible relations that may rise from it: inside and outside, empty and inhabited, horizontal and vertical, light and dark surfaces. The geometry of the space, emphasized by Downsbrough’s use of black and white images, determines that of the screen as well. In Downsbrough’s work, the way of looking at space, and at a space in particular, is deeply political. His videos and films point out the limits, the order and the regulations that the social system imposes upon us and our ways of appropriating the space, reminding us that all “placement” is at the same time an “ordering”.
The work of Peter Downsbrough (US, 1940) – sculpture, graphics,
photography, video, film, books – began with an interest in architecture and articulates a complex relationship between architecture, language and typography. Only the bare essentials remain: form is reduced to lines, colours are mostly barred. In his videos, movement and language are explored in relation to time and space: they both represent and deconstruct modern urban and industrial architecture. At the same time, a linguistic twist takes place: by inserting and interposing word blocks like AND, AS or IN, Downsbrough tilts the videos to a kind of ‘phrase’, which simultaneously functions as a ‘place’ for the viewer to lodge in.
Downsbrough has exhibited at the Reina Sofi a (Madrid), the SMAK
(Ghent), the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten/Palais des Beaux-Arts
(Brussels) and the Muzeum Sztuki (Lodz).
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