Inside the Studio

2021 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

3:19 minutes

Neïl Beloufa

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The short video Inside the Studio by Neïl Beloufa follows a humorous Toy Story -esque conversation between the artworks inside the artist’s studio. In the personless space, two animated paintings express their hopes for their future, contemplating the beverage options at the exhibition opening at which they intend to be presented, while a third painting forgoes such superficial conversation to consider their significance and purpose in the context of the art institution and the public’s perception. Interrupting their conversation, the artworks become the backdrop for an in-studio interview with the artist and a film crew. The artworks turn their irreverent and biting commentary towards the artist’s physical appearance as he speaks to the crew. One of the paintings, hung sideways by the artist, attempts to communicate the error to the people in the room (they cannot hear the artwork), while they mull over which orientation looks the best. The video serves as a comical, yet layered commentary on the secret life of paintings.

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The multi-layered practice of French-Algerian artist, Neïl Beloufa occupies the space between various dichotomies. Reality and fiction, cause and effect, presence and absence are the polarities between which the artist’s work begins to take form. Developing his reflection on these by combining various media, including sculpture, video and painting into single installations, Beloufa masterfully manages to deconstruct our contemporary systems of belief by moving between the real and the imaginative. Situating himself between these polarities, Beloufa’s practice is deeply reflective. Examining established structures of power, incidentally, those within the “creative economy”, whilst dwelling on the authority that is afforded by artists in today’s society, Beloufa eliminates his dominant role by awarding agency to actors or materials, informing one another and coexisting in installations as though they are actors and props on a set. Rejecting the alias of sculptor, or any alignment to a particular set of practices or creative processes, Beloufa works primarily as an editor, constructing scenarios to facilitate intersections between different meanings that viewers might build independently.

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Colors:

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• identity.n.01
• phantasmagoric.s.01
• wit.n.01
• fictional_character.n.01
• criticism.n.02