Candice Breitz (1972 in Johannesburg)
Having first learned about the works of Breitz, I was attracted to their study. Simple multichannel videos were ironic, painful, squeamish and worrying.
I want to note the portraiture of these works. Comparing these works with the works of Elizabeth Peyton without taking into account the fact that I want to compare the video with the work on paper, but in the end, in the first and second cases, these are images depicted on a flat surface.
Breitz's works are multifaceted and subject to the chosen plot. So series of works Love Story 2016, interviewee sits on a background of green material. The official interpretation from the author is that this background supports the truth, but we can interpret this green as a background of special effects, this is the era in which we live.
The stories told by people themselves, whether refugees or actors play a role, convey an era, character and feelings much stronger than drawings on paper.
Here I wonder if the video really conveys emotion and context better than a soundless flat surface? What does the video have that the picture does not have on paper?
Speech. Maybe something is written in the picture, but there will be no intonation and tambor, human emotion. But the voice of a man, his speech, thoughts, opinions voiced by him - this is the field of theatre, poetry, music in the end. Do we need to mix or purify art? Before that, I was pretty sure that mixing gives birth to a new one because only on the border of the merger of the heterogeneous does something new arise that does not look like these heterogeneous things.
Objective copy of the person. Any work on paper/canvas is a subjective copy of a person. This raises the question of the need for a clear copy or interpretation or asking questions. What is the challenge for the artist? For example, in works with refugees in Germany, New York and Cape Town, the artist interprets the stories of people through actors and, as a result, through his work.
Time flow. We perceive work in a second, and the story from the video - a long period.
Music. The formation of the image and emotions occur without the participation of other sensors. This means that work accompanied by sound can enhance perception and form an idea.
If today video helps to convey or play the most necessary emotion, then we should use all its potential. Voices, portraits and all, what can be depicted in this world are objectively duplicated via video recording. In other words, the world around us becomes more objective in the image, and some “virtual surrealism” arises.
But, it seems to me, the craft element also goes from the category of the physical and subjective to the virtual and objective. We no longer create an object with our own hands but build programs in the virtual world. The process of creating a virtual is clicking on the buttons of the keyboard, as well as clicking and creating certain movements of the hand in the right and left. Do the elements introduced by Pollock, when the whole body and mind were involved in the process of creating a work of art, after only 50 years lost their meaning? How can replayability of the flatness, which has lost its uniqueness (the screen) as a matter of fact of this element, can claim to at least some kind of energy of the author of the work?
Bibliography and references
· https://2015.acmi.net.au/media/428152/candice-breitz-ed-kit.pdf [Accessed 09/05/19]
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