Strangers Seen Through a Telephoto Lens
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Swiss-born, Düsseldorf-based artist Beat Streuli rose to prominence in the early 1990s for his work in color photography and video. Mr. Streuli’s abiding theme is the candid portrayal of sophisticated strangers who move about in far-flung, cosmopolitan cities. His distinctive portfolios combine contemporary modes of urban advertising and photographic portraiture with traditions of street photography. Mr. Streuli has a strong international record of museum exhibitions and major architectural commissions. But his work is also at home in intimate gallery spaces, such as Murray Guy Gallery.
“Bruxelles Midi” (2006), as installed there, consists of two related projects in still imagery and video. The sundrenched pedestrians featured in the work passed through a predominantly immigrant Muslim neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium sometime in 2005 (presumably at mid-day, as “midi” means noon).The almost full-figure, larger than life-size portraits are rendered with great clarity in a shallow depth of field. The 40-foot-long installation, comprised of inkjet prints on paper, wraps around most of the south gallery. The gallery describes the medium as “photographic wallpaper.” True enough, the printed panels are unframed and glued directly to the gallery walls.
If this frieze-like crowd advancing toward the viewer recalls mass media images of sports figures or runway models, that impression may be due to Mr. Streuli’s telephoto lens.Use of a telephoto lens within a predominantly Muslim community could evoke strong reactions; but even the artistic use of such equipment implies commentary on surveillance practices in contemporary society. Like a photojournalist, Mr. Streuli comments on the photographer’s potential to witness, interpret, and even shape actual events at the time of the shoot.Yet these are not documentary images tied to time and place, but artistic images that mimic documentary forms. The artist’s editing of this project was consistent with his work in Sydney, Bangkok, and other cities, as viewers familiar with his previous projects will immediately recognize. Mr. Streuli’s method is to make repeated visits to a specific location in a city and shoot, from a discrete distance, people who pass in front of his fixed camera. From these multiple shoots, he edits a portfolio.
A three-screen video projection, “Porte de Flandre” (2006), is projected on three walls of the north gallery. For this project, video cameras fitted with telephoto lenses were trained on a Brussels tram stop. Pedestrians linger, then disappear. The camera never moves, and as its focus remains fixed upon the human subjects, the motion of cars and trucks introduces soft-edged sliding screens behind and in front of them. At times, these shapes are allowed to create full-frame abstract compositions. Traffic sounds and sirens are occasionally interspersed with snippets of pop music, and sometimes with complete silence. One may not immediately notice that time has been slowed down in the video projection, or that fade-overs and other types of cinematic transitions were introduced.The play of movement often seems to flow from one wall to another. A deft coordination of editorial and aesthetic artifice belies the apparent spontaneity of “Porte de Flandre.”
At first glance, the oeuvres of Beat Streuli and the acclaimed Danish artist Jesper Just could hardly be more different.Yet, like Mr. Streuli, Mr. Just has established rather exact stylistic parameters for his single-themed practice. That theme, intergenerational love between two men, is one that he works out in short cinematic projects of great invention. The medium is identified as anamorphic 35-mm, and Mr. Just’s richly-layered films are presented in darkened galleries fitted for large-screen film projection.
Mr. Just’s films to date have always featured two protagonists, one a young adult (consistently performed by the actor Johannes Lilleøre) and the other an older man. How much older varies, but always at least 20 years. “It Will All End in Tears” (2006), now on view at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, is a trilogy whose sections are titled “A Little Fall of Rain,” set in a misty botanical garden; “And Dreaming is Nursed in Darkness,” set in a dimly-lit wood-paneled courtroom; and “It Will All End in Tears,” set on a rooftop overlooking the Manhattan skyline at night while fireworks burst above the city. The trilogy features a team of supporting characters who are a performance group known as the Finnish Screaming Men’s Choir. In the first part of the trilogy, they play the part of leering onlookers at the protagonists’ first meeting; in the second, they are shouting jurors. By the third, their ominous presence has created such tension that a sense of relief results when they leap off the roof. Their dramatic function is reminiscent of a Greek Chorus, and gives “It will All End in Tears” a poignant edginess.
Mr. Just is known for making films about films. He employs cinematic conventions from multiple eras to explore the male psyche — to mold it into new forms, in a sense — while challenging masculine stereotypes. Through his exacting vision as artist, editor, and director of the films’ surreal vignettes, his and his actors’ combined powers unfold together in a memorable tangle of truth and artifice.Although Mr. Just works exclusively with male performers and masculine themes, his films may contribute to a new archetype for the collective unconscious, whose gender is indeterminate.
Streuli until October 28 (453 W. 17th St., between Ninth and Tenth avenues, 463-7372);
Just until October 28 (527 W. 23rd St. at Tenth Avenue, 212-627-8000).