TRANS-DANCE
Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Antwerp
Carina Gosselé’s latest work draws deeply from an inexhaustible well of inspiration: her own personal experience. She confronts the spectator with investigations into the realms of the all-too personal running so deep they all at once become over personal and universal. While it is primarily through our eyes that we gain access to the artist’s world, our entire body is held in sway as our degree of involvement oscillates between active and passive voyeurism. Indeed, our most private moments arise out of the presence of others.
Even in overcrowded nightclubs the flow of our bodily movements creates a space that encapsulates us when we dance. However, we are not alone and as we continue we feel the many gazes piercing our shell, causing us to recoil ever further into privacy. We feel observed. This affects us and changes our behavior. We no longer dance for ourselves, but for undefined others – we dance for everyone.
TRANS-DANCE #2 is comprised of two videos that isolate the movements traced by people on their way to an imaginary dance-floor and captures their awkwardness. A neutral white backdrop helps to further divest the actors of any protective covering: they have nowhere to hide. Although they are fully clothed, their movements seem naked as we gape at them like teenage peeping-toms. In one sequence a black grid, reminiscent of a window frame, functions as a binary structure that exaggerates the size of each figure and creates a surprising dynamism by letting grey dots appear and disappear at its intersections, as in an optical illusion. As our gaze moves in and out our pupils widen and contract, building up a tension culminating in something like visual jouissance. The second video shows close-up shots of these peoples’ movements, doubled and out of sync, which has a staccato-effect in league with the disquieting mood of the accompanying sound scape.
A little further on, in some derelict building a young girl is dancing. We, enchanted by her delicate movements like a contemporary Degas, watch her as she slowly gyres towards our lens. She comes to a halt and stares in our direction. Now she has noticed us, if she continues dancing she will be dancing for us. Clearly uncomfortable she begins to vent her anger. Her outburst is directed at us. Yet we keep staring, unmoved and shielded by the skin that separates our reality from that of the young girl, who almost seems trapped inside the video TRANS- DANCE #1.
David ULRICHS
Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Antwerp
Carina Gosselé’s latest work draws deeply from an inexhaustible well of inspiration: her own personal experience. She confronts the spectator with investigations into the realms of the all-too personal running so deep they all at once become over personal and universal. While it is primarily through our eyes that we gain access to the artist’s world, our entire body is held in sway as our degree of involvement oscillates between active and passive voyeurism. Indeed, our most private moments arise out of the presence of others.
Even in overcrowded nightclubs the flow of our bodily movements creates a space that encapsulates us when we dance. However, we are not alone and as we continue we feel the many gazes piercing our shell, causing us to recoil ever further into privacy. We feel observed. This affects us and changes our behavior. We no longer dance for ourselves, but for undefined others – we dance for everyone.
TRANS-DANCE #2 is comprised of two videos that isolate the movements traced by people on their way to an imaginary dance-floor and captures their awkwardness. A neutral white backdrop helps to further divest the actors of any protective covering: they have nowhere to hide. Although they are fully clothed, their movements seem naked as we gape at them like teenage peeping-toms. In one sequence a black grid, reminiscent of a window frame, functions as a binary structure that exaggerates the size of each figure and creates a surprising dynamism by letting grey dots appear and disappear at its intersections, as in an optical illusion. As our gaze moves in and out our pupils widen and contract, building up a tension culminating in something like visual jouissance. The second video shows close-up shots of these peoples’ movements, doubled and out of sync, which has a staccato-effect in league with the disquieting mood of the accompanying sound scape.
A little further on, in some derelict building a young girl is dancing. We, enchanted by her delicate movements like a contemporary Degas, watch her as she slowly gyres towards our lens. She comes to a halt and stares in our direction. Now she has noticed us, if she continues dancing she will be dancing for us. Clearly uncomfortable she begins to vent her anger. Her outburst is directed at us. Yet we keep staring, unmoved and shielded by the skin that separates our reality from that of the young girl, who almost seems trapped inside the video TRANS- DANCE #1.
David ULRICHS
