Final Cuts presents the work of four artists who employ different elements of a filmic directional approach, thereby giving the existing gallery space a different aesthetic and conceptual configuration. The distinct areas presented by each provide the focus points of a network or passage through which the visitor will travel. The interrelationship of the exhibits causes the visitor to assume the role of actor within a scene as he journeys from frame to frame. While the works displayed are not overtly derivative of film and its processes, the cumulative effect of the experience is informed by subtle references to the language of filmic code or cinematic experience.
Through the energy of the colours and the techniques employed in her work, Katharina Grosse submerges the visitor/actor within the filmic experience. Her site-specific installation overwhelms in its colour and scale, superceding the architectural structure of the space. Her work contextualises the ‘plot’ and acts as the logical consequence of an experience in which one is not conscious of all the previously combined events.
Marco Papa’s installation functions as a borderline that must be crossed in order to reach the second part of the show. It invites and challenges the visitor to become a part of it and, by accepting his invitation to enter into the next space, the individual is cast as actor –thereby becoming an integral part of the exhibition. Those who choose to continue will leave a concrete trace of their action, others will end their experience spontaneously, and can not participate in the entirety of the plot.
Bernhard Martin presents a fictitious and changeable set, an interior painting that can alter its appearance according to the requirements of the script. It could equally be an office or the corner of a night club – everything depends on the contextualisation and on the spatial vision of the artist. The work is the stage on which the actor can perform.
Roberta Silva exceeds every distinction of media; without a projector or screen her work becomes the final realisation of the ‘film’. The powerful light used inundates the space at regular intervals nullifying and deleting any images potentially contained on the film, any plots potentially developed in the script. The search for the enigmatic source of the light will make the participants more aware of their cinematic experience.
All the works included in the exhibition act as points along a carefully proscribed route, presenting a ‘film’ in four acts. The passage from the Katharina Grosse’s ‘glorious technicolor’ through to Roberta Silva’s blinding emptiness gives a sense of an unfolding narrative that can be completed only through the actions of the viewer.