An exhibition which explores the unique relationship between art and cinema opens to the public in the New Galleries at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham, Dublin 8, on Saturday 22 June 2013. IMMA invited artists Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Cerith Wyn Evans to exhibit their work and explore concepts of the poetic and imagination that together make up the cinematic experience, thereby investigating the relationships and influence of film. Through a series of conversations, Gonzalez-Foerster and Wyn Evans explored this influence of the cinematic as a theme for the show, and then expanded the exhibition through selected diverse works from filmmakers, writers and artists. The selection of installations, video, film, painting, text and events showcases the long-standing legacy of cinema as a source of inspiration for artists since its formation. The exhibition presents a dialogue with cinema that reveals the rich interplay between the two genres.
The exhibition features works that span generations and includes some of the most important artists of recent times – Marcel Broodthaers, James Coleman, Peter Doig, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Lady Clementina Hawarden, Chris Marker, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Andrey Tarkovsky and Cerith Wyn Evans. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Irish Film Institute and is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland and the Institut Français.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster explores cinematic conventions, temporality and subjective experience; her short films and installations recreate specific moments in which individuals intersect with places – highlighting the individual traces of cultural and social contexts. Her quiet, intimate interrogation of contemporary urban life spills into her conversations and her selection of art works with Cerith Wyn Evans for the exhibition. Wyn Evans’s work stems from his interest in language and communication. He uses found fragments from literature, philosophy and film that he distils into a distinct aesthetic. His use of repetition and elliptical meaning in his work indicates endless possible readings. This is echoed by his choice of (artistic and literary) quotations replete with both classical and personal implications.
Works included in the exhibition range from film posters painted by Peter Doig for his weekly film club in Trinidad, a video projection, Ligne de Foi, 1991, by James Coleman, Polaroid photographs by film director Andrey Tarkovsky, which were selected by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for their poetic representation of landscape, photographs presenting an example of early self-cinema by Victorian photographer Lady Clementina Hawarden and the screening of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s iconic The Red Shoes, 1948. This exhibition has been co-curated by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Cerith Wyn Evans and Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions at IMMA.
Two new works have been specially created for the exhibition, both performed on the opening night Friday 21 June, at 6.30pm a choral performance conceived by Wyn Evans taking Samuel Beckett’s Imagination Dead Imagine, 1965, as its foundation, with annotation by Leo Chadburn and performed by Silver Kites. At 7pm the premiere of a unique performance by Gonzalez-Foerster based on her ongoing work, M.2062, a fragmented opera that started during the Memory Marathon, 2012, at the Serpentine Gallery, London. This performance stands as a moment within a body of work by Gonzalez-Foerster which is centrally concerned with literature and musical adventures in the spirit of Werner Herzog’s epic 1982 film Fitzcarraldo and King Ludwig II of Bavaria’s fascination with Wagner.
Gonzalez-Foerster has also curated a selection of films by Chris Marker which will be screened at the Irish Film Institute starting with Marker’s acclaimed film essay La Jetée, 1962, on Saturday 22 June. The screening will take place following a panel discussion, presented in partnership with the Irish Film Institute. This event opens a Chris Marker Screening Series at IFI and includes a screening of Sans Soleil, 1983, on Sunday 23 June. www.imma.ie
