The Immediate Future. Manon de Boer, Zilvinas Kempinas, Melvin Moti
31 January – 29 March 2009

 

The future has not happened yet. It never will have. We will never be able to gather the information about things to come that must be out there somewhere – just a few instances ahead of us in the case of the immediate future. Even this ‘light’ version of the future will always defy authoritative speech, mocking our belief that the future is more graspable when it is close at hand. But the future is forever unattainable, and therefore an unusually good example of beauty. The future remains an inexhaustible topic for art.

The Immediate Future, as a title, is both descriptive and prescriptive. The exhibition it names is built around the practices of three increasingly well-known artists. Manon de Boer (born 1966 in India, lives in Brussels), Zilvinas Kempinas (born 1969 in Lithuania, lives in New York) and Melvin Moti (born 1977 in the Netherlands, lives in Rotterdam and New York) engage viewers both ‘infra-intellectually’ and ‘supra-intellectually’. Their recent works articulate perception, movement and time both intellectually and physically.

The Immediate Future highlights these artists’ approaches to complex notions such as divination (our longing to be able to predict things to come), recursivity (our experience of time as circular, or spiralling, movement) or foregrounding (our capacity for picking certain things out of a continuum and letting others fall back into a gap or void).

Manon de Boer, Zilvinas Kempinas and Melvin Moti achieve this by challenging and subverting our habits as viewers, listeners and readers. They work in and around the field of the moving image. Manon de Boer and Melvin Moti use the media of film (occasionally transferred to digital formats), text and sound. Zilvinas Kempinas creates three-dimensional images (still and moving) from magnetic video tape suspended in physical space.

The Immediate Future features the following works:

Manon de Boer: Sylvia Kristel – Paris (Super8 transferred to DVD, 2003); Resonating Surfaces (16mm film transferred to DVD, 2005); Attica (16mm film, 2007). Courtesy of Jan Mot, Brussels.

Zilvinas Kempinas: Big O (2008–09, loop of magnetic tape suspended in the air with the help of 6 customised fans); Link (2008–09, multiple strips of magnetic tape strung in parallel concave arches from wall to floor). Courtesy of the artist and Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York.

Melvin Moti: The Black Room (DVD, 2005); E.S.P. (35mm film, 2007); E.S.P Birds (5 framed bird posters, 2008). Courtesy of the artist.

Lunds konsthall gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation in Amsterdam for the presentation of Melvin Moti’s work and the support from Lithuania’s Ministry of Culture, through the Embassy of Lithuania in Stockholm, for Zilvinas Kempinas’s participation. We also thank Manon de Boer’s gallery, Jan Mot in Brussels.