christian marclay

Exhibition review:

Christian Marclay

White cube Gallery

Christian Marclay an ex-DJ Amercian artist came to wider attention with his widely acclaimed video pieces “clocks” in .

The public now has the chance to see his latest work reflecting his on going fascination with the relationship between image and sound.

The exhibition takes up the long central white walled concrete floored space in the gallery. 3 further room spaces house a black carpeted walled silent cinema space to show one his larger scale video pieces. An animation using computer manipulated images of recognisable comic book onomatopoeas. The Vinyl Factory Press Another 2 show firstly, works on paper based again on his preoccupation with snappy bright onomatopeas and a third larger gallery space with 8 works of screenprints hung on 4 walls. The large space is divided with a central division behind which at various time intervals the sinfonietta perform in a room with walls lined at bar height with over a differing size and shaped beer glasses. The performance was recorded live then pressed onto a ‘retro’ one-off vinyl record for purchasing. 
My favourite parts were the ‘bar crawl’ video installation. Lining the entrance corridor, videos at floorlevel project images onto the opposite corridor wall forming a bright animated noisy walkway. The videos are out of synch and show from a hand held point of view shoes of someone walking, stopping and tapping or crunching underfoot various remnants of someones boozy night out. A pen taps beer bottles resonating a distinctive ring, whilst other footages have more jarring noises of beer cans collapsing underfoot, or bottles rolling on the pavement. The height of the projection means that the viewers lower legs enter the video as we walk along, adding to the vertiginous feel of the footage.

The main room, square, black carpeted with people sat randomly was another pleasing piece. Soundless, colourful, dizzying and eye catching, edited isolated words from comics jumped along the walls, ‘whizz’ whizzing around on repeat, ‘bang’ exploding outwards at varying heights. The primary coloured visual display was hynotic and humourous and worked well in the space. I found myself like other watching the loop on repeat catching different aspects each time.

More muted were the paintings, browns on peppermints, the same words from themain video replicated one per paper. Obvioius watery dashes of paint to try and match words like woosh. They seemed to dull and almost like a collection of experimental artists proofs rather than being able to stand up in their own right.

For my first visit to the cube I enjoyed the works and location and was definitely not disappointed with being able to experience some of Marclays’ work in-situ rather than reading on-line and on you tube.

The use of space and perspective of the projections were inspiring.

Christian Marclay

28 January – 12 April 2015

North Galleries, 9 x 9 x 9 and South Galleries, Bermondsey

Referencees:

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_bermondsey_2015/

28 January – 12 April 2015

North Galleries, South Galleries and 9 x 9 x 9, Bermondsey

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_bermondsey_2015/