/// selected past works ///

POMPEI
u-matic animation video, pastel drawings on paper 74x52cm., 9min 05sec.,1987

NOTE: This video exists in a single-channel and in a dual-channel version.

Pompeii was a theme that kept me busy for a number of years in the late 80's. It was a time when my work mutated from dance into drawing into animation into film and back into dance. The idea that everything might stop at an instant is an ontological conundrum that questions the nature of being. However dance - as the fluid counterpart of metaphysics - poses the question of life in all its emotional complexity.

In my drawings the ontological question meant seeing the object world in terms of first appearances of things not yet imbued with meaning, or on the other side of the spectrum, as phased-out visual objects whose story had expired. Everything happened somewhere on a threshold, on the edge of the void, but in a tragi-comical manner.
Inspired by the antique world of Pompei I also began experimenting with encaustic paint that is known for its longevity. But only a few works survived and I never really mastered the technique. It was more interesting to use pastel crayon, which I applied as layers of crumbling pigment rubbed onto a rough paper surface. The animation film was an integral part of the Cloud Chamber* performance ‘Pompei’, which was commissioned by dokumenta 8, Kassel.

*Cloud Chamber members were: Ron Bunzl, Désirée Delauney, Jose-Luis Greco

 

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STILLS:
(pastel drawings on paper, 74X52 cm by Boris Gerrets)