Video fields et en haut: Michael Snow | SOLO SHOW

Martine Aboucaya Gallery is pleased to present the fourth personal exhibition of Michael Snow (Toronto, 1928).

Major figure of experimental cinema and well-known musician, Michael Snow developed during his entire career a polymorphous and transversal practice, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, drawing, writing, holography andmusic. Michael Snow approaches this various experimentations through several theorical writings, published in various catalogs, reviews, or remained unreported (about this subject, see Des écrits. 1958-2001, a collection of texts which are commented by the artist and published by the Centre George Pompidou in 2002).

On the occasion of this exhibition, a part of the gallery turns into a dark room to receive the installation called Video Fields (2002-2015). First of all, this work is composed of the same image, representing some fields moved by the wind and repeated identically seven times in the exhibition space. This static shot is echoing another one, which is showing a synthesizer on a monitor. A sound track composed by the artist completes the installation. Video Fields reminds us the Michael Snow's desire to cross boundaries between the different artistic forms.

This images have been shot in the artist's estate, in Newfoundland, while a Storm was blowing on this land. Thanks to his camera, the artist allows us to see the invisible : the wind that is making grasses rolling and leaves behind a blue sky that we can furtively see. However, some disruptive elements are shaking this classic image : the static shots are succeeding one another in an irregular way. This jerky rhythm is considered as an innovation in Michael Snow's work, who was used to long static shots.