Approach
Eva Koch
Magda Bellotti, Madrid
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- 00:00
- Title
- Approach
- Gallery
- Magda Bellotti, Madrid
- Year
- 2005
- Duration
- 23 min 19 s
- Format & Technical
Single channel, Sound, Colour, SD video
The text used in the video installation APPROACH is from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, written in Italy for almost 700 years ago. Dante’s poem is concerned with man’s search for meaning and not least for the inexplicable or intangible.
On entering the installation APPROACH you hear voices reciting the first 14 verses of “Paradiso”, and you meet the visual side, in which a number of persons recite the same verses, but in sign language.
The 14 verses contain Dante’s deeply felt prayer to Apollo to give the poet the strength to hold onto just a little part of what he has seen on his journey.
The soundtrack and the visuals thus tell the same story, but in different languages. Caught between these two languages, the visitor to the installation is sharply confronted with the fundamental situation of our relation to the surrounding world, the constant necessity of interpretation. The ideal of unambiguous communication does not exist. We are
always in a field of interpretation, and even though we speak the same language, it is not given that we understand the same thing.
Eva Koch
- Artist
1953, Frederiksber
Eva Koch works spatially in the fields of video installation, sound sculpture. Eva Koch’s sculptures relate in scale to man’s own physical presence, most notably in her Earth Sculpture near the city of Esbjerg, created out of 800,000 cubic meters of earth, a clear landmark in the West Jutland landscape.
A recurrent theme in Eva Koch’s video works is the anonymous individual seen from a collective viewpoint. In her large-scale interactive video work VILLAR the viewer is given insight into a family whose lives have been affected by war. The work is a multi-faceted narrative showing us that truth has many aspects and that our memories are subjective.
Eva Koch’s art is often place-specific and interactive. Her works particularly revolve around the themes of communication and the shared features of human experience. Presented in a sensuous simple language in which image and word merge in extension of one another.
Related artist videos
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- 00:00
- Title
- Evergreen
- Gallery
- Magda Bellotti, Madrid
- Year
- 2007
- Duration
- 20 min
- Format & Technical
Single channel, Colour, Sound, HD video
The video installation “Evergreen” is about the power of the group and about the cruelty inherent in us that can mercilessly exclude an individual from the group. This is set in the overwhelming and beautiful landscape of the Faeroe Islands. The choice of setting is partly autobiographical, but group pressure and mobbing can take place anywhere.
The video pans continuously from the sea by the shore, across the countryside, past some houses, a little village, some shouting and stonethrowing children, and moves on across the landscape, catches a solitary child fleeing, continues over the opposite seashore, towards the sea and turns back towards the land? The sound is real sound, birdsong, the roar of the sea in the great space, the children’s hostile cries and the rapid steps of the fleeing child.
A single circular line, simple and precise, that defines an almost archetypical memory, which is enacted among humans at other levels all through our lives.
Stills
Related galleries
Magda Bellotti
- Address
- Calle Fúcar, 22., 28014, Madrid
La Galería Magda Bellotti se funda en Algeciras (Cádiz) en 1982. En 2001 se traslada a Madrid, donde abre un nuevo espacio en el Barrio de las Letras, gozando de una ubicación privilegiada cercana al Caixa Forum, al Museo Thyssen, al Museo Nacional del Prado y al Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
El objetivo principal de la galería ha sido acercar el arte contemporáneo al público. Desde un primer momento, la galería presta especial interés a los artistas emergentes, promocionándolos con exposiciones, edición de catálogos, publicidad, y facilitando su presencia en ferias nacionales e internacionales. Muchos de estos artistas son referentes indispensables en el panorama artístico nacional.