Projects 1999

From November 6 to January 9, 2000, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center presents the multimedia exhibition CLOSE-UPS: Contemporary Art and Carl Th. Dreyer. The exhibition uses Carl Th. Dreyer as conceptual axis, and unfolds in the hybrid area between art and film.

The exhibition
Carl Th. Dreyer was a master of creating intimacy on the film screen. One of his characteristic features as a director was a quite extraordinary use of close-ups. Particularly in the film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), the consistent use of close-ups has led to a remarkably intensity, which remains startling even to this day. No other work in the history of film making has used the close-up of the human face so radically. Today, the close-up is a well-known film technique, often used to get `under the skin' of the characters, in order to grip the attention of the audience.

The exhibition, CLOSE-UPS, focuses on how contemporary art relates to the themes and the feelings which Dreyer expressed through the use of close-ups. By juxtaposing Dreyer's film about Joan of Arc with eleven other works of art (video, film, installation, photo), created by some of the most exciting artists on the contemporary scene, the exhibition explores how artists today - seventy years later - gestalt the intimate sphere and portray human emotions. How do artists in the nineties portray relationships between inner and outer life? How is intimacy captured in film used today in artistic expression?

The exhibition tackles these questions from a wide range of angles. Bas Jan Ader and Tommy Olsson have put themselves in front of the camera, in performance like situations, to reflect on artificiality and authenticity in emotional situations. Richard Billingham and Annika Ström focus on everyday lives through photography and video, while Eva Koch looks at human beings in social contexts. Pierre Huyghe and Christoph Girardet have been directly inspired by film, and for example use sequences from already existing films, investigating experiences and meanings generated by the structure of film, including the seductive qualities of the close-up. For Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Matthew Buckingham / Joachim Koester, the narrative structure of the film medium is exploited in a different way, to portray human beings and their motives to act as they do, while Lawrence Weiner uses language sculpturally to establish propositions about various phenomena. This, therefore, is not an exhibition consisting only of close-ups of faces, even though there often is a connection in film between the close-up and the image of a face. The concept of the close-up should be interpreted in a broader sense as various forms of zooming-in, framing and focussing on human beings.

The exhibiting artists are:
Bas Jan Ader (Holland), Eija-Liisa Ahtila (Finland), Richard Billingham (UK), Matthew Buckingham (USA) / Joachim Koester (Denmark), Christoph Girardet (Germany), Pierre Huyghe (France), Eva Koch (Denmark), Tommy Olsson (Sweden), Annika Ström (Sweden) and Lawrence Weiner (USA).


The film, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), will be shown as an installation at the exhibition.


The Film House.
In co-operation with the exhibition curators, the Cinemateque at the Film House will screen three series of films which are related to the exhibition in various ways. In November, a number of films about and by Dreyer will be presented, as well as a series which looks at the use of the close-up in film history. In December a number of films by the participating artists will be shown.


Curators
Lene Crone Jensen (DK), curator and Lars Movin (DK), writer, curator

Organisers
The exhibition is the result of a co-operation between Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center and Nifca (Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art).

The exhibition is also supported by
Institut Francais
The Trust Foundation of Consul Georg Jorck and Mrs Emma Jorck The Royal Netherlands Embassy
FRAME (Finnish Fund for Art Exchange)


For more information, visit: www.kunsthallennikolaj.dk/en/index_subpage.asp?subpageIDX=206&mainpageIDX=96


A catalogue for the exhibition was published in 1999.

READ MORE about the publication

• Close-ups: Exhibition concept
• Close-Ups: About the artists