Gregor Eldarb – painting, films, installation, objects/work utensils & talk
Free admission!
Moderation: Dietmar Schwärzler
Talking Screen aims to explore the question of the diverse forms of presentation of films in the exhibition context, but also the cross-media interferences with other artistic practices. The presentation formats, conceived together with the guests, are deliberately kept open and are intended to include multifaceted varieties of (performative) self-presentation as well as to enable a critical discourse on filmic formats & forms. The respective setting is a combination of film examples, conversation and mini-shows for one day.
Gregor Eldarb uses a complex reference system in his artistic work, which forms the background but also the cement in the construction plan of both his paintings and his films. The primarily abstract formal languages contain substantial content that is selectively combined with figurative elements or the use of text quotations. In the video NOON FOREVER (2018, 13 min), which is shown as an installation, there are scenes from the documentary film NOWSREAL (1968) by Peter Berg and Kelly Hart, which was created with the active participation of The Diggers, a collective operating in San Francisco (1966 to 1968). Far removed from all capitalist logic, this action group of community anarchists campaigned for free kitchens, free housing and free clinics, but also installed stores where everything was free. For the formally defining, continuously rotating image in the video, Eldarb built an object consisting of two glass panels and a rotating plate and recorded the reflections of the monitor/film, which rotated on the plate, in a glass reflection. Sounds complicated, but it just works easily.
In his most recent moving image work, text modules from Esther Leslie's book Liquid Crystals (keyword: political aesthetics) serve as a source of inspiration; the visual level is populated by sensual amorphous figures that emerge with aesthetic precision as if by magic. Similar in method to his video Thinner than two ten-thousandths of a millimeter (2020, 8 min), which can also be seen on this evening, various framing devices, reflections and a self-made object equipped with a magnetic field and ferrofluid oil create a visual-aesthetic language that appears animated or computer-generated, although it is completely analogue. These are, so to speak, cinematic chambers of wonder that have fallen out of time, which visually simulate digital technologies but are in reality analog manual work. A series of large-format paintings, primarily in black, white and gray, showing (delicate) geometric figures, contrast with two short films and an installation. There will also be a little talk, questions are welcome. (Dietmar Schwärzler)
A cooperation between Künstlerhaus Wien and sixpackfilm