ART-PRESENTATION:Cyprien Gaillard

At the core of Cyprien Gaillard’s exhibition “Where Nature Runs Riot” is Nightlife (2015), a major new film shot at night over the past two years in Cleveland, Los Angeles and Berlin. Nightlife reconfigures two time-based mediums, music and film, into sculpture, creating a palpable illusion of space. Gaillard infuses Nightlife with anachronism: the soundtrack is a low-fidelity counterpart to the film’s exceptionally high-tech visuals.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Sprüth Magers Gallery Archive

“Nightlife” begins with a shot of a rippling form that looks as if it were carved from the very light of the projection. As the camera pans to the right to reveal a pitted surface of greenish bronze, one of the most iconic sculptures of the twentieth century slowly fills the frame: Rodin’s The Thinker. Is in the forecourt of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dynamited in 1970, the sculpture’s base was shredded and its bulk knocked to the ground, an act attributed to the anti-imperialist group “Weather Underground”. Next, we see a few trees swaying as if they were dancing to the soundtrack, this particular species of tree has been a motif for Gaillard. The setting shifts again, to the outskirts of Berlin, with the camera rising above a dark grove of trees into a night sky, where fireworks are bursting into life above the 1936 Olympic stadium. The film then returns to Cleveland for its coda. A huge tree, bare branches barely visible at first, is lit from behind with a helicopter searchlight shifting restlessly in the sky. There is also, a small sculpture, “Ammonite Dub” (2015). In the center of a fossilized ammonite, cut in half to reveal the patterns within, the artist has inserted a turntable needle. The sculpture is encased in a double mirror, creating an illusion of infinitely receding space. The synthesis of contrasting ideas is a typical gesture of the artist, and finds expression in a new series of double-exposure Polaroids called “Sober City” (2015).

Info: “Where nature runs riot”, Sprüth Magers Gallery, Oranienburger Straße 18, Berlin, Duration: 2/5-18/6/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat: 11:00-18:00, www.spruethmagers.com