David Claerbout is a Belgian artist. His work combines elements of still photography and the moving image.
Early life and education
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.
Work
David Claerbout is "best known for large-scale moving and still imagery that deals with the passage of time". 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. In Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho time is suspended as an airplane caught by the camera moments before its crash, floats, the sunlight gently moving over a 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.” With works such as Villa Corthout and Piano Player, 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 actors repeat a given dialogue and a set of given movements, deconstructing cinematic time. It centers on a conversation between a couple that is repeated over and over in different parts of a 1996 Bordeaux house designed by the architect Rem Koolhaas. 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. One protagonist is played by Josse De Pauw, who helped Claerbout write the script. In Sections of a Happy Moment, 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'. In Sunrise, Claerbout presents an 18-minute work in near-darkness, accentuating the dim tones by projecting the film on to a grey surface. For nearly the entire film a housemaid goes about her chores in the muted light of pre-dawn, finally departing the house and cycling through a dimly-lit landscape, accompanied by Sergei Rachmaninoff's Vocalise. Set on the coastline of Brittany, France, The Quiet Shore is a 36-minute black-and-white film capturing scenes that range from moments of minute detail to panoramic expanses of coastal landscape. The viewer experiences, frame by frame, a single moment from a multitude of different perspectives and viewpoints.
McMonagle, Christine/Sean Kelly Gallery, 'David Claerbout. Drawings and studies. With an essay by Christian Viveros-Fauné', Hatje Cantz Verlag/Sean Kelly Gallery, 2015 Davila, Thierry, 'Shadow Pieces. David Claerbout', mamco: Geneva, 2015 Vergne, Jean-Charles, 'David Claerbout', Clermont-Ferrand: FRAC Auvergne, 2015
2012
Ardalan, Ziba, Hoelzl, Ingrid, Snauwaert, Dirk, 'David Claerbout. the time that remains', Ludion, 2012 Pacher, Jeanette/Secession, 'Diese Sonne strahlt immer', Vienna: Secession, Vereinigung bildender KünstlerInnen, 2012
2008
Van Assche, Christine, '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 National Museum of Contemporary Art, 'David Claerbout', Athens, 2008
2004
Gaensheimer, Susanne, Meschede, Friedrich et al., 'David Claerbout', Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2004 Green, David, Lowry, Joanna, 'Visible Time: The work of David Claerbout', Herbert Read Gallery, Brighton: Photoworks, 2004
