Baobab

2001 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Tacita Dean

location: Berlin, Germany
year born: 1965
gender: female
nationality: British
home town: Canterbury, United Kingdom

The photographic quality of the film Baobab is not only the result of a highly sophisticated use of black and white and light, but also of the way in which each tree is characterized as an individual, creating in the end a series of portraits. The monumental and unnatural aspect of the baobabs turns them into strange and anthropomorphic personalities. Adding to the descriptive aspect of the film, the sound is a recording of the environment, of sounds made by animals, and participates in this peaceful contemplation. The still, almost fossilized aspect of the landscape makes it look majestic and eternal. « The camera, which examines in Baobab the ancestral and imposing trees of Madagascar, tries to capture the shadow and light effects, specific to photography. » (Essay by Julia Garimorth, in « Tacita Dean: Seven Books », published by Steidl / ARC/ Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2003).


Although Tacita Dean works with all kinds of media, her 16mm films are probably among her most well-known works. While they deal with the specificities of the medium – like the notions of time and narrative, through the use of still shots – the aesthetic quality of her films remind of photography or painting (maybe because she had studied painting in school). Memories and atmospheres are conveyed through sensual images, colors and light. In her work, Tacita Dean relates the past to the present, often creating a certain melancholy: the artist focuses on stories, characters or architectural relics, and questions the notion of narrative by using both documentary and fiction devices. Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, UK, in 1965. She lives and works in Berlin.


Colors:



Serious Games 3, Immersion
© » KADIST

Harun Farocki

2009

For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations...

Made in Heaven
© » KADIST

Mark Leckey

2004

In Made In Heaven , we are face to face with a sculptural apparition, a divine visitation in the artist’s studio...

Related works featuring themes of: » Abstract Versus Figurative Art, » Chance, » Color Photography, » Figurative Painting, » British  
» see more

Sirens
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1977

Taking its title from the eponymous mythological creature—famously featured as sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey...

Epiphany…learnt through hardship
© » KADIST

Ryan Gander

2012

Epiphany…learnt through hardship is composed of a bronze sculpture depicting the model of the little dancer of Degas, in the pose of a female nude photographed by Edward Weston (Nude, 1936) accompanied by a blue cube...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Sirens
© » KADIST

Paul Kos

1977

Taking its title from the eponymous mythological creature—famously featured as sea nymphs in Homer’s Odyssey...

Untitled #242, 104, 975 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 18 colors
© » KADIST

John Houck

2013

Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1)
© » KADIST

Cerith Wyn Evans

2008

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Roman Baths Beneath a Museum in Croatia
© » ARTNET

The pool, mosaic floors and underfloor heating once formed part of Emperor Diocletian’s palace...

Art Basel reveals 287 leading galleries and expanded city-wide program for its 2024 edition in Basel, Switzerland (News)
© » ARTEFUSE

Art Basel reveals 287 leading galleries and expanded city-wide program for its 2024 edition in Basel, Switzerland (News) - ArteFuse Art Basel reveals 287 leading galleries and expanded city-wide program for its 2024 edition in Basel, the first led by the show’s new Director Maike Cruse With 287 premier galleries from 40 countries and territories, Art Basel will once again bring together the international art world at its marquee fair in Basel, Switzerland...

Artists' Postcards: A Compendium, By Jeremy Cooper
© » THE INDEPENDENT

Artists' Postcards: A Compendium, By Jeremy Cooper | The Independent | The Independent Of interest to students of art and deltiologists (collectors of postcards) alike, Jeremy Cooper's extensively illustrated book provides the first critical study of the place of the humble postcard in the history of art...

Related works from the » 2000's created around » Berlin, Germany  
» see more

The Left Hand Can't See That the Right Hand is Blind
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2004

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

This Exhibition
© » KADIST

Tino Sehgal

2004

Tino Sehgal’s This Exhibition requires an interpreter (in this particular piece, a gallery attendant) to faux faint each and every time a visitor enters into a given space...

Corrupted file from page 14, (V1)
© » KADIST

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck

2008

Part of a larger series of photographic works, Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck’s Corrupted file from page 14 (V1) from the series La Vega, Plan Caracas No...

Related artist(s) to: Tacita Dean » Anri Sala, » Douglas Gordon, » Roni Horn, » Maurizio Cattelan, » Tino Sehgal, » Christian Marclay, » John Bock, » Paul Chan, » Pierre Huyghe, » Thomas Demand  
» see more

Ghost games
© » KADIST

Anri Sala

2002

Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach...

This Exhibition
© » KADIST

Tino Sehgal

2004

Tino Sehgal’s This Exhibition requires an interpreter (in this particular piece, a gallery attendant) to faux faint each and every time a visitor enters into a given space...

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

The Left Hand Can't See That the Right Hand is Blind
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2004

Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

The Otherworldly Landscapes of Dylan Gebbia-Richards
© » HIGH FRUCTOSE

Combining melted paraffin wax and pigments, Dylan Gebbia-Richards crafts luminous and otherworldly landscapes...

If These Stones Could Sing
© » KADIST

Milena Bonilla, Public Movement, Arin Rungjang, Shitamichi Motoyuki, Emilija Škarnulyte, Sriwhana Spong The exhibition If These Stones Could Sing focuses on the body as a site to engage the politics of public monuments...

The Breaks
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2002

The Breaks reflects Capistran’s interests in sampling and fusing different cultural, social, and historical sources...

The Consciousness of Memory, Time and Guilt
© » KADIST

Anna Boghiguian

2014

In the painting called “The Consciousness of Memory, Time, and Guilt” as in many of her recent works, the body is fragmented...