VIDEOINSTALLATION "BLUE"
by Marianne Heske at National Gallery of Zimbabwe Harare Dec 2001
In the semi-dark gallery two simple
arched iron gates are lying side by side
on sand on the floor. As if trapped and framed by the fallen gates are
some
500 small stone Shona sculptures of heads. A blueish light pulses gently
on
the display which, as the viewer is drawn in, is revealed to be a video
of a
large blue butterfly opening and closing it's wings, and casting it's
light
on the display below.
Are we looking at a waiting silent audience, or a parade. ? The rows
of evenly spaced similar heads within the gates remind us of the crowds
of clay soldiers in the Emperors Tomb at Xian and the blue butterfly leads
on to analogies of the ephemeral nature of humanity's existence. Is this
the man in Chuang Tzu's story who dreams he is a butterfly? Who on
waking wonders if he is a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or perhaps
a butterfly awaking as a man..?
This videoinstallation "BLUE" is part of a series by Marianne
Heske,
each in a different country. The nature of the materials changing each
time
relating specifically to the context of the country of the exhibition.
Some displays have had heads of gold and in another crystal
or glass. She says,"I use what I find in nature. Everything is already
there. I don't make anything new." Marianne's various art works are
conceived in a global framework and are about travel and placing objects
in different locations.
She was born in 1946 in Alesund and studied at the Bergen
College of Art, Craft and Design and later in France, England and
the Netherlands having her first exhibition in 1970.
In the Biennale de Paris 1980 at the Centre Georges Pompidou
she exhibited a 400-year-old hay barn transported from Tafjord a
small village in the north west of Norway. "A real wooden hut
made of wood and stones with a roof made up of wooden planks covered
with vegetation. It served as shelter for visitors and farmers and belonged
to a farmer who finally a greed to lend it to Marianne for a year. And
so
the hut, piece by piece, was disassembled and taken to Paris, where it
was rebuilt according to its original design. At its sides two TV sets
-
witnesses - were placed; the first one to register the spectators and
the
second showing the hut in its original environment in the mountains.
Exactly one year later Marianne transported the hut from Paris back to
its native setting as she had promised the owner. To the immemorial
graffiti produced in the Norwegian land the hut also exhibited Parisian
graffiti deriving from a metropolitan culture" (P Restany)
Marianne's work exhibits a kind of visual nomadism, an addiction
to traveling. She says that "To speak about travel is to refer to
crowds".
A tangible metaphor that expresses her quantitative awareness of the
human context: the uniform mass, a sea made up of balls, the heads
of glass dolls. For Marianne the quantitative phenomenon encompasses
the addition of individual particularities.
She has also made paintings and prints. Here her method of work is
to make "housewife video's" of natural subjects. Then she freezes
selected
sequences and photographs them with an ordinary camera, scans them
into a computer, processing them electronically before transferring them
to
silk, glass, brass, aluminium or some other material. Two of her graphic
works were used as postage stamps for Expo 2000 Norway for which she
also designed the Norwegian Pavillon.
The videoinstallation "BLUE" at the National Gallery is a simple
work
that contains many references to themes within her other artworks, I would
have liked to seen more information presented simultaneosly in the gallery
about the larger context of works that forms the artist's work and ideas.
However, "BLUE" is a strikingly appealing work, profoundly moving
and it's meaning does stand on it's own. The installation involved
collaborations with Diana Anthony of Vhukutiwa
Gallery (9, Harvey Brown
Milton Park), who sourced the 500 sculptures, also Valentine of Presentation
Solutions who provided the video projection. The opening at National Gallery
of Zimbabwe was hosted by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Chris Hamblin
(See http://www.uol.com.br/23bienal/paises/ipno.htm
where you will find a
lengthy article about Marianne Heske by Pierre Restany )
(See same article at www.africancolours.com http://www.africancolours.com/?content/bluevideo.html )
noticed
the similarity to the current $12 stamp?