ART-PRESENTATION:Neïl Beloufa

Neïl Beloufa’s work occupies a space between truth and fiction. He works with untrained volunteers and aspiring actors. The artist situates himself between all these polarities easily because he does not differentiate one from the other. Everything is presented with a flat sincerity, but there is always a touch of humor and irony that makes the work compelling.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MoMA Archive

For his first solo exhibition in New York,  Neïl Beloufa combines sculpture and moving-image media to create immersive viewing spaces, “The Colonies” (2016), is a custom-built architectonic installation Beloufa made by hand with a small crew using inexpensive construction materials and techniques. Within this environment, the artist treats projections like objects and deliberately obstructs and diffuses images onto multiple surfaces. By revealing the cables and cords in his works and looping in images of viewers through closed-circuit television, the artist draws attention to the technological or social apparatuses and power dynamics embedded within the installation. The video at the center of the presentation, “People’s passion, lifestyle, beautiful wine, gigantic glass towers, all surrounded by water” (2011), features a group of people in an unnamed city enthusiastically describing their fantasy of bourgeois urban culture. Beloufa often works collaboratively, and in this instance he teamed up with actors to generate scripts that imitate such popular genres as infomercials and science fiction. In the space between the fantasy he represents on screen and the real world of galleries and surveillance systems in which he places his works, Beloufa insists that his “work isn’t the actual object but the relations I have built with it”.

Info: Curator: Thomas J. Lax, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53  Street, New York, Duration: Mon-Wed & Fri-Sun 10:30-17:30, Thu 10:30-210:00, www.moma.org