YARAT CENTRE: LITTLE LIES GROUP EXHIBITION

YARAT Contemporary Art Space presents Little Lies – an exhibition with works of David Claerbout (Belgium) and Soren Thilo Funder (Denmark). 

Little Lies is a journey through a network of white lies, disillusionment and fabricated histories. The exhibition confronts the two main political narratives of the 20th century, with the deception in everyday images, constructed personal stories and false metaphors. Little Lies belong to our everyday; they establish our understanding of a socio-political reality and influence our historical awareness. Through a selection of works of the two artists the exhibition considers the boundaries of our physical reality and how its representation can highlight social ambiguities. 

This exhibition is a conversation of six works, three of which are continuously looped. Breathing Bird (2012), by David Claerbout, is a poetic and treacherous image that misleads and confuses the viewer. Its small scale is opposed to the monumentality of Oil Workers (from the Shell company of Nigeria) returning home from work, caught in torrential rain (2013). This work subjects the viewer to a soulless gaze, trapped in a constructed mise-en-scène. It questions an economic reality based largely on oil and its social impact on a population in-wait. The lifelessness of the Oil Workers is opposed by effortless vitality in In This Very Moment (Antoine) (2014), by Soren Thilo Funder. Here a young boy obliviously dances on rollerblades on a field in Verdun, a place known as a brutal battlefield of WWI. These works raise a political awareness, while evoking the endlessness and inescapability of time and memory. 

Sequentially presented throughout the space, the three other works evoke a sense of history through make-belief. The works of Soren Thilo Funder employ cinematic tricks to suggest historical narratives. The Cosmonaut (I don’t see any God up here) (2013) uses signifiers from the collective imaginary and deliberately subverts them through false constructions.  The same tactics are further complicated in Swerve (You’re Gonna Die Up There) (2016) by adding an element of popular associations, through the history of cinema, while exposing the technical mechanisms behind his own storytelling. Funder’s works thereby force the viewer to recognise the white lies, which are continuously denied in favour of constructed images and stories. 

Opposed to Funder, in Travel-1996-2013, David Claerbout allows the illusion to further expand and engulf the viewer. Made over a period of ten years, the work is a digital construction of an ever deepening and elusive forest.  The full submersion of the senses is violently broken down as the camera pans out to reveal a plain sub-urban landscape. It voices a critique of a singular perspective, manifested through the inevitability of betrayal. 

Little Lies enchants and disappoints. It draws from our need for confirmation and exposes our human vulnerability. In a society of false constructs it calls out to our senses and urges us to recognize the white lies embedded in our daily reality. 

This exhibition is curated by Suad Garayeva-Maleki and Björn Geldhof.

Produced with the support of Vidi-Square, Belgium

Artist Biographies:

David Claerbout (b. 1969) currently lives and works in Antwerp and Berlin. Having developed a technique of pictorial 3D, he is at the forefront of the discourse exploring confluences in representation, photography, film and digital technology. Recent years have seen his work honoured with prizes and numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and North America. Recent shows include a retrospective at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Belgium, and the touring exhibition 'The Shape of Time', which travelled between 2007 and 2009 to the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts; the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland; the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and the De Pont Museum for Contemporary Art, Netherlands.

Soren Thilo Funder (b. 1979) lives and works in Copenhagen. His works are formal investigations of the power relations of modern day society. He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and The School of Art and Architecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Previous exhibitions include solo presentations at Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Tranen Contemporary Art Center and Overgaden – Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen. He was represented at the 19th Biennale of Sydney, 1st Copenhagen Art Festival, International Biennial of Visual Art - “After The Future”, 12th Istanbul Biennial, 2nd International Moscow Biennial for Young Art, Manifesta 8 – Parallel Events and 6th International Liverpool Biennial.

For media and image enquiries please contact: 

Farah Alekperli

Telephone: +994 50 274 6747

Email: farah.a@yarat.az

Notes to editors:

Exhibition: Little Lies

Location: YARAT Contemporary Art Centre, National Flag Square, Bayil, AZ1003

Dates: 10 June – 9 October 2016

Exhibition open: Tuesday through Sunday, from 11:00 until 20:00.

Admission is free

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