Manon de Boer, Anri Sala, Xavier Veilhan

• 21.03.–28.04.2001

The exhibition unites three artistic positions that are concerned with changes in the human image and the formation of identity. The issue of the freedom to act and the various scenarios of such reactions provide an image addressing the problem of the individual.

Xavier Veilhan is showing a series of large-format computer-generated photographs. Two men are represented as individual or paired images, both naked except for black stockings. The situation seems rapt, unreal; the space is simply constructed and the bodies have an extremely three-dimensional quality, looking as if they had been moulded in wax. Even though recognisably self-portraiture, Veilhan's work addresses the distance between the artwork and the artist, attempting to research the most varied of filters and technical necessities in the production of the piece concerned. On the basis of an analysis of this process, Xavier Veilhan addresses the issue of the artist's distance to their own artworks (and implicity, the singular person's from their own body) and employs serial representation to develop a complex structure taking human existence as its theme.

In his most recent film Uomo Duomo (2000) Anri Sala shows a brief sequence of an old man in Milan Cathedral. Sitting on a pew, entirely sunken in his own thoughts, the circumstances surrounding the situation remain unexplained. Lost in religious contemplation, asleep or fighting for his own survival, this inner exodus remains equally open to any interpretation. Following the film Intervista, which we presented as part of the exhibition Wider Bild Gegen Wart, this is the second showing of a piece by this Albanian artist at the gallery. Anri Sala lives and works in Paris.

The original material to the slide projection Thirteen Elusive Moments Out of One Second by Manon de Boer stems from a long conversation held between two women about their memories of Los Angeles. Sylvia Kristel, the protagonist in the series of Emanuelle films, the epitome of 1970s erotic cinema, is talking with a friend of the artist's about her experiences and places she knew in Los Angeles, about her flight from fame and removal from a safe environment. All this information is withheld from the viewer. Only a one second excerpt from the entire conversation is conveyed in the form of a series of slides which is nevertheless saturated with information. The removal of concrete biographical details and the blending out of narrative elements transform the story of two women into a generalised resumé on memory, history and life.