For Ever was British artist Mat Collishaw`s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. In For Ever De Vleeshal screened two of Collishaw`s video works.
Photo(s): Leo van Kampen
For Ever featured two video works by British artist Mat Collishaw: For Ever and Snow Storm. For Ever`s enormous projection dominated the space of De Vleeshal. On entering, visitors immediately came face to face with a gigantic stripper standing motionlessly on a moving turntable. Around her, bottles and an equally immobile audience revolved on their own turntables. This stillness within the carrousel`s movement made for a sinister and gloomy spectacle. No actual strip, no excited response from the audience. The listlessness of the performance was accentuated by the stripper`s mask, which obliterated all traces of her personality.
Snow Storm was screened at the back of De Vleeshal. It showed a vagrant, trapped in a snow globe, arranging his blanket in hopes of protecting himself from the snow swirling in endless circles down the snow globe – and back up again. The vagrant`s isolation and exclusion were reinforced by the position of the snow globe: within an interior.
In making these video works Collishaw ventured on the borderline of photography and video. In the case of For Ever he set up ten (photo) cameras around his subject: all arranged at different angles and activated simultaneously. The resulting photographs were subsequently edited and set into motion by computer.
exhibitions
tags: mat collishaw
