ART-PRESENTATION:Rudiments
The new solo exhibition by the artist duo Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin is entitled “Rudiments”. The exhibition explores the tensions between discipline and chance, precision and chaos, empathy and the involuntary pleasure of watching the pain of others.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle Archive
Central to the exhibition is the film work “Rudiments”, in which Broomberg and Chanarin have collaborated with a group of young army cadets at a military camp on the outskirts of Liverpool. Whether the scenes we observe are staged by the artists or simply a document of the camp’s routine practice remains unclear. The absurd and disturbing introduction of a a dark clown whose performance teeters on vulgarity, radically challenges the military codes and interrupts their carefully choreographed routines. Broomberg & Chanarin’s film, explores the formative moments of childhood and early youth. Two large scale photographic works dominate the other galleries. The first shows a series of still-lives of bullets that have collided in midair. These improbable objects were originally found on the battlefields of the American civil war. For the second series, have photographed military grade prisms, shards of optical glass that are used in the sights of precision weaponry. Violence is transmitted through these materials. The artistic practice of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin frequently leads them to directly engage with existing power relations within the production and use of images. The artists are questioning not only the task of the photographer, but also the medium itself and its role as a political instrument. The camera is never neutral and innocent, rather, its physical and material characteristics often reveal its more underlying ideological functions.
Info: Rudiments, Curating: Kaja Pawełek, Coordinator: Katarzyna Tomczak-Wysocka, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, 2 Jazdów Str., Warsaw, Duration: 26/6-6/9/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Thu & Sat-Sun: 12:00-19:00, Fri: 12:00-21:00, www.csw.art.pl
