Lisson Presents I
Lisson Gallery, London, UK
Akram Zaatari, Video in Five Movements (2006)
‘Lisson Presents I’ is the first in a proposed series of regular group exhibitions at Lisson’s second space on Bell Street. Each new instalment will showcase the work of an artist ‘not currently’ represented by the gallery, alongside work by gallery artists, with a focus on a new body of work by one represented artist.
This first instalment profiles the work of Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari, already well known for his film and video work that explores the vicissitudes of his native country by scrutinizing the function of archives and documentary images. Both works shown here form part of an ongoing series that utilizes the archive of Lebanese studio photographer Hashem El Madani. Video in Five Movements (2006) compiles clips of Super-8 home movies made by Madani during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. There are five distinct sections, though it is difficult to tell what the organizing principle of each section is, the silent footage in each depicting friends and family of the photographer uneasily walking towards the camera. The obvious awkwardness that they feel, betrayed by facial expressions and body language, points up a tension between the still photograph and the moving image, and between studio photographer and his subjects.
Akram Zaatari, L’Enlèvement (2008)
The second work, L’Enlèvement (2008), contains two elements. The first is a small light-box, illuminating a photograph taken by Madani in the late ‘50s of a group of people in a cinema. The second is a digital projection of a film made of a Super-8 projector set on a plinth, and projecting off-screen. The Super-8 film, which can be heard but not seen, is an episode of ‘70s BBC TV series The Protectors, entitled ‘The Kidnapping’ - both projector and film were found in Madani’s studio. While this ongoing ‘Madani project’ is a complex meditation on authorship, and an artist’s relationship to his immediate environment and economy, I’m unsure whether these two works successfully stand alone in this context.
Ceal Floyer, Autofocus (2002)
Ceal Floyer is represented by what would be an enigmatic and intriguing addition to any group show. Autofocus (2002) is neatly summarized by its title and list of materials: ‘Light projection with Leica Pradovit P-150 projector and Unicol ‘teloscopic tilting stand’.’ The work adroitly avoids the pitfalls of rehearsing - or rehashing - conceptual art strategies by injecting humour and pathos into its aesthetic of administration. The focus slips in and out, bringing the dust that lies on the lens of the projector into sharp focus before rejecting it as an appropriate image to project. The work is poetic and allegorical in contrast to Jonathan Monk’s Developing Mirror Piece (with Filming Process) (2006), a more didactic, and laboured excavation of ‘60s artistic tropes, or Sean Synder’s clinical rerun of institutional critique.
There is also familiar work here from Lisson stalwarts Art & Language and Rodney Graham, and a new film, Black and White (2008), from Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky, which forensically examines a single close-up of Liv Ullmann from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966).
The function of ‘Lisson Presents’ is similar to that of their yearly themed summer shows. The potential problem of explicitly foregrounding the function of these presentations is whether this curatorial conceit can be sustained for long. Nine shows of this sort every year means that nine artists not currently represented by the gallery will be given what amounts to a test-run - a little like a very public interview. In addition, how many more themes or conceptual frames are capable of unifying the work of Lisson’s artists? For this outing the works are said to be concerned with the ‘self-evident quality and immediacy of images’, and they - mostly - use a range of neo-conceptual strategies to explore these concerns. With one or two exceptions, this is a pretty succinct (though admittedly crude) way of characterizing the work of Lisson’s entire roster. So what next?
Dan Kidner
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