curated by Lorenzo Taiuti

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Velan presents a solo show by Crispin GURHOLT (Oslo, 1965), curated by Lorenzo Taiuti - M-Multimedia. Crispin Gurholt’s work belongs in a vast area of contemporary art photo chosing (unexpectedly) the nineteenth-century “Tableau Vivant”. The “Tableau vivant” has been a modality to fix image inside the interval between photo, painting and kinetic languages, reappearing during the sixties inside the strategies of the conceptual languages.In recent “artist’s photo” there is a remarkable encrease of reflections and self-reflections on “image” utilizing the “Staged photography”, like in the movie-atmospheres of Anthony Crewdson or in the “Period Portraits” of Clegg & Guttman and many others.

The photos of Crispin Gurholt are not anymore the “Moment of Truth” of classic photography but more and more the depiction (garishly forged) of the author’s thesis, a research of a circumstantial proof on a shifty reality, an alien reality hopelessly without any likelihood to show any truth. A central element in his works is focusing on a meaning of an image as seen in the endless visual images that surround us. And another the research of the borderline between movement and stilness, that are the basis for a new cinematic/theatrical narrative. His photos and videos are as well moments of borderlines. Borderline between Art and Market in “Ovikodden” where a terrorist (or an artist?) kills a Gallerist. Image then reproduced as a photo in “Stand 120 Berlin” where the art dealers are africans (a hint at the emerging cultures of the rising countries?). Again borderlines between physical presence and social absence in photos where people socially outcast  (the emigrants) underline their presence in the total lack of other people’s attention. The social unease (or the critical complexities of the reality) are focused in “Torpedo 2006”, where again the “Terrorist” is the paradigm of  antagonism inside conflicting realities. Nel video “Vernissage” the light is on the symbol situation of the art system, the vernissage where are concentrated the strategies about the artwork.The vernissage becomes a frozen moment of cultural functions, a flash representing the narrative, the serial fiction in a hyper disenchanted reality, in forms close to the “fashion look” of the fashion world, world of fake visions replacing the possibilities of a real look on reality. A “Simulacra” Vernissage, according to the famous definition by Jean Baudrillard.