9 min 15
Ghost Games , follows the enigmatic dance of crabs “steered” by a flashlight in the night of darkness of a South American beach. The video produces a surreal impression, typical of Sala’s work, with no plot in the classical sense, no story being told. Like in Blindfold (2002), in which a sunrise is reflected in urban billboards, and Time After Time (2001), in which the figure of a horse emerges from darkness lit by the headlights of an automobile, Sala likes to explore the phenomenon of light and its effects; In Ghost Games , he uses the threatening reflection of the flash light through the darkness of the beach. But unlike several of Sala’s videos’ deliberately slow style, where sometimes the camera does not even move at all, this film is punctuated by the erratic moves of the monster-like creature , its ghostly disappearances into sand holes; the crab’s occasional encounters with the feet of unidentified people standing in the sand, at times like an aggressive dance of protagonists, dramatically adds to the creepy feeling of the scene.
Anri Sala received a degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in that city, and went on to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and at the Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing (film and video). His work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Berlin Biennale, the Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana and in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He combines techniques from two realms of art, the moving image and painting. His captivating visual projects on the one hand constitute a penetrating analysis of culture and the human condition as determined by place and political context, and on the other an exploration of the language of imagery, codes of visual communication and structures of film narration. Many of his projects relate to the identity of individuals who function at the fringes of multiple cultures. Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana, Albania. He lives and works in Berlin.
                                    
                                    Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...
                                    
                                    Open Mind is a model created by Capote for a traversable public maze that, when seen from above, resembles the human brain...
                                    
                                    The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
                                    
                                    For I use to eat lemon meringue pie till I overloaded on my pancreas with sugar and passed out; It seemed to be a natural response to a society of abundance (1978), also known as the Bodybuilder series, Martinez asked male bodybuilding competitors to pose in whatever position felt “most natural.” They are obviously trained in presenting their ambitiously carved physiques, but their facial expressions seem comparatively unstudied...
                                    
                                    Like many of his other sculptural works, the source of I am the Greatest is actually a historical photograph of an identical button pin from the 1960s...
                                    
                                    These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
                                    
                                    Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
                                    
                                    Hako (2006) depicts a mysterious and dystopic landscape where the world becomes flat: distance between different spaces, depth of field and three-dimensional perceptions are canceled...
                                    
                                    These hand drawn maps are part of an ongoing series begun in 2008 in which Gupta asks ordinary people to sketch outlines of their home countries by memory...
                                    
                                    A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...
                                    
                                    For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame...
                                    
                                    Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...
                                    
                                    The Nightwatch , which is an ironic reference to the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, follows the course of a fox wandering among the celebrated collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London...
                                    
                                    Enrique Ramirez’s La Memoria Verde is a work of poetry, politics, and memory created in response to the curatorial statement for the 13th Havana Biennial in 2019, The Construction of the Possible ...
                                    
                                    Days of Our Lives: Reading is from a series of work was created for the 10th Biennale de Lyon by the artist...
                                    
                                    Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
                                    
                                    The Class (2005) by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook challenges the viewer’s personal sense of morality and tolerance by depicting a classroom from hell...
                                    
                                    The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
                                    
                                    Created for the tenth Lyon Bienniale, in Days of Our Lives: Playing for Dying Mother, Wong’s ongoing negotiation of postcolonial globalization takes aim at French society...