FAITHFULL – POLARIS

Galleries — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 12:04:41 +0000

8 B.P.M (experiments with time) presents a set of works, video, photographs, installation, thought and realized during the residency of the artist at the semaphore of Créac’h on the island of Ouessant *. The waves come crashing on the rocks at an average rate of 8 times per minute, giving the title to the exhibition). The semaphore (from the Greek sêma: signal and phorós: carrier) was built on the cliffs of the island’s Atlantic coastline, a signaling station for the French Navy to communicate by signal or radio with ships sailing within sight. Simon Faithfull stayed there for a whole month, facing the setting sun but also the weather fronts coming from the Atlantic.

As usual, the artist-traveler and scientist-experimental tried to melt into the island, as much in the rocky mass of the granite, as in the liquid element. Hypnotized by the beams of the lighthouse during the nights, the one that the artist humorously names his « silent discotheque » became the main actor of the film shown in the exhibition, giving a second role to the artist’s silhouette. Intrigued by these rocky masses that constitute the island, Simon Faithfull wanted to immerse himself among them. These hairy rocks as he calls them, constitute in a photographed part of his residence, the testimony of the love brought by the artist to this rocky island, open to the rough weather.

Born in 1966 in England, Simon Faithfull studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and at the University of Reading. Influenced by his travels and by Land Art, Simon Faithfull has developed a multidisciplinary practice mixing performance, video, photography, digital drawing, installation and writing

* This residency initiated in 2008 by the artist Marcel Dinahet and organized by the association Finis terrae ** – (www.finis-terrae.fr) welcomes each year critics or artists to spend a whole month at the semaphore of Créac’h.

** Finis terrae is a film by the director Jean-Epstein made in 1928 on the island of Ouessant.

SIMON FAITHFULL – POLARIS

Galleries — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 12:22:27 +0000

Latest film Reconstitution for a Future Scenario 2: Cap Romano (HD Video, 8min)

Stranded on the half-submerged ruins of a futuristic ‘Dome Home’, a figure is haunted by memories of a home before its foundations were washed away by a series of hurricanes. The film was shot in ruins that lie off the coast of Florida – a luxury summer-house built by an oil engineer in 1979, but destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Further hurricanes eroded the coastline and further destabilized the house’s foundation until by 2013 the sand-island itself had built be swept away. The remaining domes are still visible above the water but are now stranded in the ocean. What was land is now sea. The film seems like a strange dream or a memory from the future.

Born in 1965 in England, Simon Faithfull studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and then at the University of Reading. Influenced by his travels and by Land Art, Simon Faithfull has developed a multidisciplinary practice mixing performance, video, photography, digital drawing, installation and writing.
His works are considered to be the traces of his performances or physical experiences (often challenging) of the early travellers and adventurers. Using the globe as a material to sculpt his films, and to question the limits of earth and sky space, but also to question the place of man, and of course the place of the artist.
Thus, based on proto-scientific experiments (the artist is often advised in his projects by the scientists themselves), whose importance and interest are far from the constraints of innovation and results, Simon Faithfull gives our world and his works a poetic and philosophical dimension of science. He also allows us to question ourselves about our near future, highlighting, like a Buster Keaton of art, our flaws and mistakes.

Galleries in Paris » simon faithfull

FAITHFULL – POLARIS

SIMON FAITHFULL – POLARIS