With: Madeline Djerejian, Nayan Kulkarni, Clement Page 2 March – 31 March 2007 Open Wednesday to Saturday 12-6pm Talk: Thursday 18th March 6.30pm at Standpoint, the curator in conversation with the artists. Standpoint, 45 Coronet St, Hoxton, London N1 6HD Gratuitous Little Weight How can we conceive of space as a stage for men and not merely a somewhat nostalgic object of contemplation?Paul Virilio Gratuitous Little Weight responds to Paul Virilio’s urbanist vision of history as an event landscape in which the persistence of the material moves to the cognitive persistence of vision. Calling upon the mechanisms of memory and documentation, the tension between what an image reveals and what we know about it, Gratuitous Little Weight is a photographic investigation on the aesthetics of disappearance, the elusive and ephemeral world of the finite. Madeline Djerejian Madeline Djerejian was born in New York City and currently lives and works in New York and Wales. Her photographic works and other projects have been widely exhibited in the US, Germany, and the United Kingdom and are most recently included in the publication Frozen Tears 3 (UK). Nayan Kulkarni Nayan Kulkarni is a British artist who graduated from The Slade. His diverse practice includes photography, video installation and project based works in the public realm. Clement Page Clement Page works with film, painting and photography and has shown extensively internationally as well as nationally at Lisson Gallery, VTO and Cell Projects.
Private view: Thursday 1st March 6-9pm
Guardians & Sentries, 2001/2006 Djerejian’s photographic series portrays poetically uncanny landscapes, some of ominous architectural remnants and others of mysterious physiography. However the alluring landscapes represent imprints of a rather un-poetic historic past, namely battlefields, pillboxes or bunkers in Normandy or Verdun. As the viewer you are drawn into a tension between the eerie yet intriguing aesthetic of the image, and the callous reality of its content. Once aware of the particular subject matter, the viewing experience becomes an introspective space of contemplation.
Line Series, 1996 – 2006 examines the viewing process as an experience, that is created through slight digital anamorphosis of the photographic images, in which the single vanishing point is exaggerated through strong converging linear compositions. Sites of barren richness inform the photographic approach. The landscapes are sites with strong signs of historical human interaction, like SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) preservation areas, traces of former military defense zones or pole marks of ancient pilgrims way for safe passage. “They expose a kind of emotional atrophy or sublimation of the body into their expanse”. (NK)
Topologies, 2003 A series of photographic investigations into cityscapes of areas of London that were heavily bombed during World War II, and that have since become marginalized or partly ghettoized zones. These historically loaded areas are photographically captured when the former architecture and usage are on the verge of complete disappearance through new developments. “These zones become the architectural and historical unconscious of the city”. (CP) Through long exposure and very slow film, the viewer investigates in the sharpest detail an uncanny Topology of urban history.
