DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art

ZIDANE, UN PORTRAIT DU
21e SIÈCLE
by Douglas Gordon and
Philippe Parreno
2006, 90 min, music by Mogwai
The all-action portrait of soccer superstar Zinédine Zidane plunges us into an actual match between Real Madrid and Villarreal on April 23, 2005. On television the cameras follow the ball, in this film they follow Zidane. The lone, elegant and intensely focused figure is set against the roar of 80,000 spectators in attendance. We study Zidane’s face, movements, and extraordinary poise, from the first kick of the ball to when he leaves the field at the end of the match. Made by the acclaimed visual artists Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, the film is both a new form of portraiture and a sports spectacle for a broad viewing public. Seventeen synchronized cameras were used, each focusing solely on Zinedine Zidane in real time, during a real - and often unremarkable - game. A mesmerizing portrait of a man at work, we see the legend running and in repose, muttering and thinking, waiting and watching – and throughout we watch Zidane’s watchfulness. Enhanced by Mogwai’s haun ting music, the majestic sound design recreates the sensorial environment of the large crowd as well as the isolated sounds of cleats on the pitch.

Art as experience

For art to be experienced or observed, it has to be emplaced — put in place, however temporarily. There are often two contradictory demands under which artists labor: "To be faithful to the collective historical experience and to be true to the recognitions of the emerging self." According to Seamus Heaney, the two ways in which a place is known — one is the lived and illiterate; the other, learned and literate — co-exist "in a conscious and unconscious tension" in the artistic sensibility. In many ways, existence, space, and history, demonstrates just how strongly art, personal life, and the world interlock.

Fillliou and Monk

"Art is what makes life more important than art." Robert Fillliou
"Life is what makes art more important than life." Jonathan Monk

Serpentine Gallery London

Karen Kilimnik 20 February – 9 April 2007
















America artist Karen Kilimnik’s paintings recall the work of painters from the 16th through to the 19th centuries. Her mise-en-scene approach is inspired by specific rooms in stately homes, horse riding, Tudor architecture and the occult and mixes contemporary and historical references.

The Karen Kilimnik exhibition features over 50 of the artist’s paintings and drawings from the past decade, as well as recent installations staged according to her fascination with historical allegories.

The artist has said of her work: Being so inspired by fairy tales, mysteries, books, TV shows and ballets etc. I like to make up characters myself as if I’m a playwright and these are characters and scenes I invented or observed… So I’ll see a picture of someone or something in a photo or a painting and cast them in my so-called play as a character I’ve made up or sometimes borrowed.

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Malmö Konsthall
"This is the First Day of My Life"
March 10 – June 6, 2007

The title of Elmgreen & Dragset’s exhibition "This is the First Day of My Life" seems to address the question: What now? What will I choose? How will I deal with this first day? We never choose our first day, our day of birth; somebody else makes that choice for us. From day one, various factors influence our behavioural patterns: Who we are, what we become.
The exhibition "This is the First Day of My Life by Elmgreen & Dragset" is a comprehensive presentation of the artists’ works from 1997-2007. Since 1995 the artists have collaborated on a wide range of performances, interventions and installations. Elmgreen & Dragset have consistently played with and against the exhibition space throughout the vast series of works entitled Powerless Structures. This series challenged architectural, sexual and social structures combined with a critique of institutional spaces.