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
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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...

7″ Single 'Pop In'
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Martin Kippenberger

1989

7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...

You see with no lights
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Ryan Gander

2004

You see without light is a group of photographs around the theme of Bauhaus...

Ghost games
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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...

Bread and Roses
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Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Bread and Roses takes its name from a phrase famously used on picket signs and immortalized by the poet James Oppenheim in 1911...

Untitled (series)
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Francis Alÿs

2006

This series of small drawings is executed with varying materials—pen, ink, colored pencil, charcoal, and masking tape—on architect’s tracing paper...

Person with Pillow: Desire, Lust, Fate
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John Baldessari

1991

The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive...

The Making of Monster
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Douglas Gordon

1996

In Monster (1996-97), the artist’s face becomes grotesque through the application of strips of transparent adhesive tape, typical of Gordon’s performance-based films that often depict his own body in action...

A vehicle with no Lights
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Ryan Gander

2004

A vehicle without light is a group of more personal photographs...

Intentionally Left Blanc
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Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...

Beyond the White Walls
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Jeremy Deller

2012

Beyond the White Walls , with a commentary written and spoken by Jeremy Deller, is often wryly amusing...

Black Imitates White
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Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Thomas’ lenticular text-based works require viewers to shift positions as they view them in order to fully absorb their content...

Black Hands, White Cotton
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Hank Willis Thomas

2014

Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...

Brent Sikkema – Visionary Art Dealer Of Jeffrey Gibson And Kara Walker Murdered
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Kara Walker

Brent Sikkema, the Manhattan art dealer renowned for representing artists such as Jeffrey Gibson and Kara Walker found dead The post Brent Sikkema – Visionary Art Dealer Of Jeffrey Gibson And Kara Walker Murdered appeared first on Artlyst ....

One we are not
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Ryan Gander

2004

Ryan Gander is a collector...

shores shored (Working Title)
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Michael Dean

2016

The sculpture shores shored (Working Title) makes reference to the human form...