Introduction

Esther Schipper is pleased to announce its participation in Gallery Weekend Beijing with a solo presentation of the Belgian artist David Claerbout. On view will be the large-scale video installation Wildfire (meditation on fire), accompanied by works on paper in both acrylic and India ink, made by the artist in relation to the video.

David Claerbout's 24-minute single channel video projection Wildfire (meditation on fire), originally conceived in 2019–20 for Musea Brugge, uses 3D computer techniques and a simple camera movement to depict a spectacular wildfire in an artificially rendered landscape. Moving at a very slow pace, views of a luscious forest slowly merge into dramatic—and hypnotic—still images of destructive flames. Projected on a large-scale free-standing screen, the work seems to absorb the viewer into its hellish scenery.

The video work is accompanied by a selection of works on paper produced in connection with Wildfire (meditation on fire). Claerbout creates these works in a variety of media alongside each of his film projects, as part of the creative process and including notes to himself about the film shootings or preparatory studies. According to him: “drawing was what I was best at for putting ideas on paper.” Showing a great attention to detail, these drawings are made before and after completion of the video work. More than simply preparatory sketches, they transcribe onto paper the duration of the moving images—thereby capturing and extending time in a parallel way to Claerbout’s experimentation with the passage of time in his films.

Claerbout says that he “sculpts in duration. The definition of duration is different from that of time: duration is not an independent state-like time, but an in-between state.” With his large-scale video-based installations, the artist makes the viewer a part of the work: whether by establishing a connection between the projected images on the screen and the audience, or by creating a spatial relationship between the screen itself and the exhibition space, or simply by allowing a process in which “a single scene can develop into another by the presence of the spectator and a bit of time.”

Originally trained in painting and drawing, David Claerbout is known for his works using photography, video, digital technology and sound. His practice revolves around the concepts of temporality and duration, images suspended in a tension between stillness and movement, as well as the experience of dilated time and memory.

Claerbout’s first institutional retrospective exhibition in Asia opened recently at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and is on view through June 26th, 2023.