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Arendt & Art
Arendt & Art, Luxembourg
Beat Streuli, “World cities”
Nov. 17 2015 - Apr. 03 2016
Add to Calendar 17/11/2015 03/04/2016 Europe/Brussels Beat Streuli, “World cities”

Symbiosis and estrangement: Beat Streuli’s photographic and video-based installation at Arendt & Medernach

Since the 1990s, every shot taken by the artist Beat Streuli, while founded in a solid conceptual framework, inevitably invites us to plunge into the spontaneous movement of daily life in the city. Immersed abruptly in this mass, we come face to face with the vast photographs and monumental installations created by Beat Streuli as if confronted with some figure or detail of urban life. We are transported by these enormous portraits, picked out from the crowd on vast surfaces. Often, the face becomes an absorbing and reflecting canvas, blending the personality of the subject with that of the observer. It then becomes what philosopher and critic Françoise Gaillard calls a sort of interface, a medium which directly compels the attention and in which the gaze is constructed in the interaction of artist and spectator.

These photographs also bear witness to the artist’s awareness of the places he appropriates: Moscow, Dubai, Hong Kong and, earlier, London and New York, to mention just those cities where Arendt & Medernach has a presence.

Here and there through the mural and the videos we glimpse the contradictions and tension of these cities, in particular in recent events such as the “Umbrella Revolution”, the weekly sit-in by Philippino housewives, and the police presence in Hong Kong; the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, a demonstration of power by a Putin who is still at the heart of internal and external conflicts in Moscow; or, again, the portraits of Indian and Pakistani seasonal workers contrasting with the phantasmagorical world of Dubai.

The particular meets the general, but all the interest lies in the sometimes vastly enlarged details and in the combination of images.

By juxtaposing faces and surfaces, portraits and texts, Beat Streuli succeeds in using his complex medium (wallpaper and small and large superimposed photographs, along with the videos) to create an adversarial blend of symbiosis and estrangement that alternates with the gaze. This approach, which allows spectators to both engage with and remain distant from this set of evocative images, presents the living and the built-up environment of cities with an objectivity which goes beyond the moment. Aesthetically sophisticated photographs mainly focusing on the individual are combined with images of built components whose details tend towards the abstract. A visual game of overlay and interpenetration, of what can be glimpsed and what can be seen, ceaselessly demands the viewer’s attention.

The permanent installation at Arendt House also displays a series of photos from Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong in which people and abstract elements combine with Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic and Latin texts. Through their transparency, these fixed images of the new financial centres situated astride East and West, between Europe and Asia, blend with the flow of Luxembourg traffic and passers-by.

Once again, as in all Beat Streuli’s work, we are confronted with the similarities and differences of these urban settings in a globalised world widely assumed to be increasingly stereotypical and similar. Only a deeper reading reveals the particularities of individual cities. The force of these photographs and videos lies in the meaning they lend to details, or to the capture of the significant fragment that holds the key to the essence of beings and things. Similarly, the balance created by the artist between the sensory and the intelligible guides the viewer in engaging with the image, unveiling a way to construe the images that draws on the different strata of the medium.

Paul di Felice

41A avenue J.F. Kennedy L-2082 Luxembourg Luxembourg DD/MM/YYYY true

Symbiosis and estrangement: Beat Streuli’s photographic and video-based installation at Arendt & Medernach

Since the 1990s, every shot taken by the artist Beat Streuli, while founded in a solid conceptual framework, inevitably invites us to plunge into the spontaneous movement of daily life in the city. Immersed abruptly in this mass, we come face to face with the vast photographs and monumental installations created by Beat Streuli as if confronted with some figure or detail of urban life. We are transported by these enormous portraits, picked out from the crowd on vast surfaces. Often, the face becomes an absorbing and reflecting canvas, blending the personality of the subject with that of the observer. It then becomes what philosopher and critic Françoise Gaillard calls a sort of interface, a medium which directly compels the attention and in which the gaze is constructed in the interaction of artist and spectator.

These photographs also bear witness to the artist’s awareness of the places he appropriates: Moscow, Dubai, Hong Kong and, earlier, London and New York, to mention just those cities where Arendt & Medernach has a presence.

Here and there through the mural and the videos we glimpse the contradictions and tension of these cities, in particular in recent events such as the “Umbrella Revolution”, the weekly sit-in by Philippino housewives, and the police presence in Hong Kong; the Victory Day military parade in Moscow, a demonstration of power by a Putin who is still at the heart of internal and external conflicts in Moscow; or, again, the portraits of Indian and Pakistani seasonal workers contrasting with the phantasmagorical world of Dubai.

The particular meets the general, but all the interest lies in the sometimes vastly enlarged details and in the combination of images.

By juxtaposing faces and surfaces, portraits and texts, Beat Streuli succeeds in using his complex medium (wallpaper and small and large superimposed photographs, along with the videos) to create an adversarial blend of symbiosis and estrangement that alternates with the gaze. This approach, which allows spectators to both engage with and remain distant from this set of evocative images, presents the living and the built-up environment of cities with an objectivity which goes beyond the moment. Aesthetically sophisticated photographs mainly focusing on the individual are combined with images of built components whose details tend towards the abstract. A visual game of overlay and interpenetration, of what can be glimpsed and what can be seen, ceaselessly demands the viewer’s attention.

The permanent installation at Arendt House also displays a series of photos from Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong in which people and abstract elements combine with Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic and Latin texts. Through their transparency, these fixed images of the new financial centres situated astride East and West, between Europe and Asia, blend with the flow of Luxembourg traffic and passers-by.

Once again, as in all Beat Streuli’s work, we are confronted with the similarities and differences of these urban settings in a globalised world widely assumed to be increasingly stereotypical and similar. Only a deeper reading reveals the particularities of individual cities. The force of these photographs and videos lies in the meaning they lend to details, or to the capture of the significant fragment that holds the key to the essence of beings and things. Similarly, the balance created by the artist between the sensory and the intelligible guides the viewer in engaging with the image, unveiling a way to construe the images that draws on the different strata of the medium.

Paul di Felice

41A avenue J.F. Kennedy,
L-2082 Luxembourg, Luxembourg
http://www.arendt.com/arendt-art