Screening: Envelope
Salt Beyoğlu
May 3 – May 26, 2011
Tobias Collier
2009, 07’00”
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday between 12.00 and 14.00, throughout May
What looks like a traveling shot of a star-studded sky is, in fact, a single tracking shot documenting the holes in the ceiling of the 422 meter-long Al-Hamidiyah Souq in the old city of Damascus. According to popular belief the holes were caused by gunshots during the 1920s protests against the French mandate. The accompanying soundtrack is a recording of the noises and background voices of the souk’s thousands of daily visitors. Exploring the conflict between the sacred and the profane, positioning that conflict at the core of human experience and frustration, the video is an abstract of our relationship to faith against the diverging evidence that surrounds us. It ultimately suggests that art is perhaps an avatar of that condition.
Tobias Collier (b.1972) graduated from Central Saint Martins, London in 1999. Since then he has exhibited regularly in the UK and internationally including shows at Steven Friedman Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Royal Academy, Haus Der Kunst (Munich), Pianissimo Gallery (Milan) and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). In 2009 Collier was a DELFINA resident artist in Damascus, Syria in collaboration with the Mustafa Ali Art Foundation and AllArtNow.
