Marcel Dinahet 13

Opening: Thursday 27 February 2009 at 6:30 pm.

For his exhibition "1=3", Marcel Dinahet has come up with three video installations produced by La Criée Centre for Contemporary Art. The works will follow each other at three-week intervals, in the following order:

Figures - 27 February – 22 March This first sequence shows the immersion of a young dancer in a swimming pool. The camera revolves around her body, sometimes staring at her face, inviting us to look carefully at the tiny subtle moves of her suspended body.

River - 24 March – 12 April London neighbourhoods are filmed from a boat on the Thames, using an on-board camera set at the waterline. Moving in time with the water, this video induces instability and loss of bearings.

Cliffs - 14 April – 26 April Intrigued by the mass and physical force of the ocean, the artist has filmed the back-and-forth movement of the sea striking a cliff.

Water is a fundamental component of Marcel Dinahet's videos. Filming the immersion of a human body in a swimming pool, capturing the buildings of London while drifting down the Thames, confronting the sheer cliffs of Ouessant: these different procedures give rise to striking images that are sharp-edged, jerky, buoyant and dense.

In their semantic reach and their radical emphasis on materiality Dinahet's videos are statements that make no concessions to any form of aesthetic, commercial or political desire to please.

Always at the boundary between reality and fiction, Dinahet's highly unconventional videos defy all documentary or narrative logic. In these simple, sensual works, in which the camera is often at the mercy of the elements, the recurring issue is transposition: transposition within our way of seeing, transposition of bodies and the elements.

Marcel Dinahet
1=3
Kurator: Larys Frogier