IBID PROJECTS is pleased to present an exhibition of contrasting film and photographic works by Dutch artist Gabriel Lester. Since exhibiting his landmark installation ‘How to Act’ at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam in 1999, Lester’s practice has frequently explored the spatial and narrative conventions of cinema and theatre. Using a diverse range of mediums – from film pieces through to complex architectural environments – his work invites the viewer to reflect upon and consider their own place in fabricated open narratives in which the mechanisms of their own illusionary devices are often made apparent.
Screening in the main gallery is ‘Peace is not the Absence of Conflict’ (2007). Here we see the interior of an empty apartment building in South America. The camera glides across and through the rooms to a soundtrack of music compiled from film noir and scary-movie scores. The viewer is left in a state of suspense, yet a climax never comes, there is never a conclusion. Such creation of dramatic tension is common throughout the artist’s work, in which situations are set up and left for the viewer to decipher or use to compose their own narrative.
Offering a counterpoint to such cinematography and abstract formalism, is the more documentary-style film ‘The Cola Yogurt Project’ (2004), shown in the back gallery. The work was shot and edited by Lester over a 10 day period in Lithuania. Here, the artist is seen at a series of meetings with entrepreneurs, professors and other artists discussing the spirit of invention that spread across the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Humour and the absurd feature strongly in the piece.
Critic Sara Arrhenius has written of Lester’s work and its relation to the time-specificity of filmmaking techniques: “The technologies used in bygone ages to create illusions of reality frequently strike us as strange and somewhat comical. We peer through peculiar old stereoscopes and wonder how anyone could have been taken in. We are incapable of imagining what it was like to walk through 19th century dioramas, how terrifying the fear-inducing effects of vaudeville theatre were, or how uncanny waxworks monstrosities appeared to be …
Gabriel Lester’s art frequently takes us back to these outmoded techniques for creating illusions, such as, for example, in audio pieces where he has worked with silent film music. We could describe his art as a study of the available techniques for creating an experience of reality. An investigation that also encompasses our own culture’s conceptions of seeing – how we create images, how we look at pictures, and why we permit ourselves to be convinced by images.”
Previous solo shows by Gabriel Lester have included ‘Big Bang’ at Bloomberg Space, London (2007), ‘Highlight’ at Palais des Beaux Art, Brussels (2004) and ‘Cut To the Chase’ (2002) at Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. A monograph ‘Gabriel Lester: How to Act’ was published by Veenman in 2006.
