ART-PRESENTATION: Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen is an English filmmaker and video artist known for his criticall -acclaimed feature films “Hunger” and the Oscar-winning “12 Years a Slave”. Steve McQueen grew up in London and studied painting before switching to film. He studied art and design in London and New York, first getting critical notice for his 1993 short film “Bear”. This first video revealed some of the themes that the artist continued to explore in the ‘90s such as the relationship of the body to space. His work was recognized in 1999 when he was awarded the Turner Prize.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Marian Goodman Archive

 

Steve McQueen in his exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris, presents his latest film installation, as well as several new works produced especially for this exhibition, those comprises a wall installation formed of several dozen dark blue neon lights, each a unique handwritten version of the phrase, “Remember Me”. The film installation “Ashes” is a work composed of two films projected simultaneously on either side of a free-hanging screen. First is a portrait of Ashes, a young man from Grenada from where the artist’s family also originated. Cracking a mischievous smile and taunting the camera, Ashes is seated at the prow of a boat sailing the Caribbean Sea. The footage was captured during the production of another work, entitled “Caribs’ Leap”. In contrast to the content of the first film, the second film projected on the other side of the screen was shot eight years later in a Grenada cemetery and domes in contrast to the idyllic postcard pictures of the Caribbean island. “Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life”, said McQueen. “We live with ghosts in our everyday”. The intensity of the piece is derived from the juxtaposition of the two projections linked by an off-screen voice. McQueen uses a monologue to pull together the threads of a story that are absent from the images. Employing this narrative device, each viewer is rendered a witness to the drama through the oral testimonies of Ashes’s friends.

Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 79 Rue de Temple, Paris, Duration: 9/1-29/2/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, http://mariangoodman.com