Visitors are invited to immerse themselves and lose themselves in a dreamlike and unsettling world.
The installation consists of six video projections set within black frames, a Plexiglas false ceiling that bathes the space in red light, and a 30-second looped soundtrack featuring an aria performed by Cécilia Bartoli. On the walls, two sequences of images followed one another: a man and a woman appearing simultaneously on different screens, and long forward tracking shots along railroad tracks. The interplay of repetition, movement, and shifts in the images, combined with slow motion and haunting music, disrupted the space and caused a loss of bearings through a distortion of time and space.
“I made all of this up in the hope that it would comfort me, help me carry on, allow me to see myself as a traveler at a certain point on his journey, between a beginning and an end—gaining ground, losing my way, but eventually, for better or worse, moving forward. It’s all a lie.” Samuel Beckett
With no beginning and no end, A Spider. A Spider Is Running Across My Heart And Then Another. Spiders Run Across My Heart And If I Close My Eyes, I Can Hear The Rush And The Rustle Of Their Tiny Dry Bodies Scurrying Through Me .It remains a story yet to be told, a succession of scenes whose overarching narrative is woven outside the frame. The black space between the screens constitutes the realm of possibilities, an empty space in which thought regains its freedom to intervene. Conversely, within the screens, the characters are trapped, going around in circles, moving back and forth incessantly but never meeting; the trains lead nowhere. All these elements have led to Ugo Rondinone’s work often being linked to that of Samuel Beckett. Indeed, wandering, emptiness, the mundane, the human condition, solitude, and the presence of characters in space are recurring themes in Beckett’s work. One of the distinctive features of Ugo Rondinone’s work lies in the repetition and reinterpretation of his pieces, since the same series of videos can be presented either as video projections in a specific environment or as part of an installation featuring monitors (Roundelay, 2003 et Clockwork for Oracles, 2004). This characteristic reveals the importance he attaches to the viewer and to the viewer’s perception of space and image, depending on the setup employed. A Spider… is centered on the creation of a theatrical space (reminiscent of a theater, opera house, or movie theater), but one in which the spectator-traveler finds themselves immersed.
Alexandra Gillet
Production : La Criée centre d'art contemporain, Rennes
