Fernsehturm, 2001 Fernsehturm
Anamorphic film, 16 mm colour with optic,
44 minutes
© National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
May 11 to August 24, 2008
Preview: May 25, 2008, 2 p.m.
The Musée d’art de Joliette (MAJ) presents, from May 11 to August 24, 2008, screenings of Fernsehturm, a film made on 2001 by British artist Tacita Dean. It was shot in the revolving restaurant of the Fernsehturm, the once-famous Television Tower of East Berlin,. A notable icon of modernist architecture. The interior of the tower was filmed with a fixed camera and is shown on a loop. Dean’s use of film corresponds to her fascination with time as an abstract concept, presented here with great subtlety and skill.
It is not the view outside that interested the artist but rather the interior space of the restaurant, shown in a panoramic format shot with a 16 mm camera. The film evokes a remarkable parallel between the architecture and the medium. The design of the windows recalls the cinema screen, suggesting the sequence of frames in which the action takes place.
In constructing her narrative, Dean linked it with the passing of time, an obsession of hers; this is a meditation on the idea of transition. People arrive and leave, the waiters come and go, the sun rises and sets, the restaurant slowly changes. The visitor becomes both a spectator of and a witness to these movements, conversations and gestures. No surprise disturbs the orderliness of things. On loan from the Nation Gallery of Canada, Fernsehturm gives visitors the opportunity of discovering an internationally renowned artist, whose work represents a milestone in the evolution of video art.
Tacita Dean was born in 1965 in Canterbury, England. From 1985 to 1988 she studied at the Falmouth School of Art, and then from 1990 to 1992 at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she obtained a master’s degree. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1996, was awarded the prestigious German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship in 2000, and the art prize of the Freunde des Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Foundation in 2002 from the city of Aachen. Since the early 1990s her works have appeared in numerous solo exhibitions in major cities across the world – Rotterdam, Philadelphia, Basle, Barcelona, London, Melbourne, Berlin and New York. Although film is her favourite medium, Dean uses various other techniques, notably drawing, photography, video, engraving and writing.
