Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to present its first collaboration with Belgian artist David Claerbout. Birdsong is the title of this solo exhibition, spread over three floors of the gallery, showing the distinctive facets of Claerbout's practice.
Opening the exhibition is the work Birdcage (2023), a video work depicting the disruption of a picturesque, tranquil garden park, in full bloom, by an explosion in excruciating slow motion, both unsettling and comforting to the viewer.
In line with Claerbout's ideas on anti-anthropocentrism, the Glossy Starling and the Song Thrush are given a central role, with a strong focus on the change in aura they undergo in panicked states. As we witness the gradual exchange of the energetic qualities of violence and peace, Birdcage explores how memory completes our visual perception, manifesting that the human subject is, in essence, [removed];
Backwards Growing Tree (2023), depicts a solitary tree in the countryside near Salsomaggiore Terme (Parma region, Italy). Entirely digital, and paradoxically handmade, the tree is tracked, in reverse, over a 5-year time span. Starting from an attempt to counter the linear aspect of time, Backwards Growing Tree shows us clock time in a mirror.
Claerbout’s work often implies a very painterly approach, a pictorial quality that is clearly continued throughout the exhibition. It is only through a more contemplative, still, involvement of the viewer that the works reveal their true nature.
Works on paper fill the last space of the exhibition. Texas Border Piece (2023) is a series of nine works in greyscale capturing a devastating encounter of the US Border Patrol with Haitians attempting to cross the Texas / Mexico border to build new lives. David Claerbout laid eyes on press photos of this event in 2022, and was struck by its faux-pictorial style, in stark contrast to the horror of the incident and the conventions of [removed];
This series is joined by works complimenting the works on the concluding other parts of the exhibition – elaborate studies that support the video works, dissecting and providing insight to both artist and viewer.