PRESENTING ARTvonTRIER
PRESENTING ARTvonTRIER
Lars von Trier is indisputably one of the greatest cinematographers the world has ever seen; uncompromising and unconventional, he is notoriously famous for shocking his audience again and again with new strokes of genius.
Where do these masterpieces derive from? With ARTvonTRIER, we suggest that the key to understanding the genius of Trier, is to look at him as a visual artist with extraordinary skills of image creation. The method of his moving images, which so strongly appeal to our sensibility, rather than our logic sense, is significant.
Leaving the cinema, we are infected with impressions and feelings, that were hitherto unfamiliar to us and this is simply what characterizes the unique out-of-this-world, mind-and-body- merging sensation, that only Lars von Trier is capable of composing.
“
My films generally center around thousands of pictures being flashed in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion”.
–Lars von Trier
EXTRACTING THE ESSENCE FROM THE ILLUSION
EXTRACTING THE ESSENCE FROM THE ILLUSION
Lars von Trier has throughout his career made 13 feature films. In each of them exists 24 images pr. Second. In average let’s say each film lasts 1,5 hours.That means 13 movies x 90 minutes x 60 seconds x 24 stills = 1.404.000 images. Almost one and a half million images has been made in order to create the 13 Lars von Trier movies we all know, love and hate. Naturally, we can’t see all these single frames, since our perception does not cor- respond to a pace of 60 images pr. second. However, our eyes, mind and brain have been exposed to this inconceivably high number of visual stim- ulation, when we watch the movie play out on the wide canvas. And perhaps, one might argue, it is exactly this moving magic that has up until now triggered our sensory system to agree on Lars von Trier as a great artist.
In this project, however, we have decided to turn the tables upside down, in alignment with Trier’s well known sets of rules, as the Dogme95 mani- festo, of which he’s famously quoted for telling Ingmar Bergman: The rules are supposed to be read as Satan reads the bible …. And perhaps rather be interpreted, than followed We are therefore excited to present the imagery of Trier, which the world already believes to be familiar with, in a com- pletely new setting, inside out, as a reversion of the original process: A gallery exhibition of stills where the images are interpreted as photo art.
This means, movie stills transformed out of their usual stream of movement, but not out of context. We are presenting a small selection of images pr. movie, that we believe, by standing alone as a still, gets the deserved space to breathe and manifest itself as
1) an extract of the original art work, that is the movie, condensed into a single frame grab
2) an independent work of art that holds inherently it’s own visual language, meaning and aesthetics
3) an example of world class photography art that has for decades been overlooked by those who have limited themselves and their gaze to exclusive- ly see Lars von Trier as a cinematographer
“
We try to use elements that penetrate directly into the subconscious […] People might not immediately understand what they see, but there might be some images created inside of them, that give rise to certain experiences – things they might not immediately be able to put into words”
–Lars von Trier
BREATHING IMAGES
BREATHING IMAGES
And it is exactly this punctuation of what we’re used to think, how we’re used to see the world, that is at stake. Trier offers with his images a way of sensing and comprehending the darkest sides of human nature, that is so immanently different to everything we know.
With ARTvonTRIER we extract scenes of the movies, materialized as stills, inviting the beholder to dive in to and dwell within a universe of the beauty that lies within Trier’s depiction of the unimaginable. The anti-aesthetics characterizing Trier’s psychological thrillers, gives the opportuni- ty of grasping and processing some of the most intimidating states-of-mind such as melancholia, depression, obsession, addiction, supercilious- ness, frustration, anger, sorrow, pain and grief into something one can live with. Not understand, not accept, but live with and grow from. This is what makes Lars von Trier a true artist.
SUBLIME IMAGE ORCHESTRATION
SUBLIME IMAGE ORCHESTRATION
It is no secret that Lars von Trier is one of a kind, which can also translate into a feeling of not belonging anywhere; which is as well a returning theme in his movies. As a young man, Trier applied for both film and art school, but didn’t get in to any of them. He even tried to apply for The Danish equivalent to the Salon des Refusés, and sent his paintings to Den Frie’s censored and acclaimed exhibition “Efterårsudstillingen” in 1974. Not even here was he accepted. Luckily, this didn’t stop Trier following his creative intuitions, and today, more than 40 years later, we can all enjoy the fruits of his hard work as an unwanted, self-taught artist with an influential film history degree and a strong DIY-“I don’t give a shit”-attitude in his backpack.
As any other successful artist, Lars von Trier has been studying images before creating his own – the way he manages to quote and homage his predecessors, whether referring to painters such as Casper David Friedrich or Edvard Munch, cinematographers as Andrei Tarkovsky and Carl Th. Dreyer and not least the great authors Albert Camus and Marcel Proust (among many others), is giving meaning to the sense of elevating already existing poetry into new dimensions by sublime image orchestration.
By Malou Solfjeld, Art Historian
“
Images aren’t only what you see. It’s also about everything outside the image. Images aren’t only images of something, but also on some- thing.”
–Lars von Trier
