Carlier | gebauer in Berlin is currently showing the work of young Brazilian video-artist Marcellvs L., who was born in 1980 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Marcellvs L. detaches commonplace objects from reality - a rope moving in water, a man walking along a street, wind blowing through leaves, a boat moving slowly to and fro - slowing down time in an attempt to create a tangible physical staging of time.
Despite digital retouching processes, Marcellvs L.'s videos have the aesthetic of raw visual material, with pixels and electrons remaining visible, lending the works an unfinished quality. The films have a radically anti-narrative structure - nothing happens but the actual event is the extension of time, and duration is the main protagonist. These are works which play on the patience of the viewer who is compelled to wait, only to discover that the waiting has been in vain - ultimately the focus is on a heightened form of the viewer's own attention and perception rather than any event takign place on the screen in front of them.
Marcellvs L.'s videos focus on details devoid of the usual context determining an image. With their minimal content the videos border on abstraction. Vanishing contours dissolve subtle hints of representation so that the surface becomes at one with Marcellvs L.'s expanded time.
In his series 'VideoRhizome', which he has been working on since 2002, Marcellvs L., referencing Deleuze/Guattari in the title, has developed a concept of infection and action as components of his art. Since 2002, 2,480 tapes have been sent randomly to households around the world since, with no indication as to the sender's identity. Once new videos are made the tapes are sent on to further random addresses in a continual circulation, the work of art constnatly being renewed. The idea behind the work is to spread the risk of 'contagion' as widely as possible, to subvert the historical notion of the 'art work' and 'authorship', and to be open to an unpremeditated outcome.
Marcellvs L. was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award 2006, and won the Grand Prize 51st International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2005. He has shown his work at the biennales in Sao Paulo, Havana and Santiago, and at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, The Artists Cinema, Frieze Art Fair, London, the KunstFilmBiennale Köln, and Art Outsiders, Paris.
Marcellvs L. Wer mich lenkt ist das Meer | Arch 51, 52
Until 17 February
Carlier Gebauer
Holzmarktstraße 15-18, Bogen 51/52
10179 Berlin
Tel +49 (0)30 280 8110
www.carliergebauer.com
Marcellvs L., 'ebbing.flowing', 2006
HD, synchronised projection
69 minutes, video installation
Marcellvs L., 'Untitled', 2006
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