Louis-Philippe Scoufaras / Omphalos
19 January - 10 March 2018
xavierlaboulbenne
Schoenleinstrasse 5
10964 Berlin
All images and teaser are courtesy of the artist and xavierlaboulbenne
Rising
from the depths of Antiquity, Kronos descends the stairs of a
monumental temple in a snowy winter night, holding a newborn in his
arms. At the bottom of the steps, the king of the Titans devours the
infant, instead of the Omphalos as in Homer’s epic tale, then
returns to darkness.
Omphalos,
2016, single channel video projection, colour, sound, 90 minutes, was
filmed at the Wallhala in Bavaria, a 1:1 neoclassical interpretation
of the Parthenon of Athens that served as a pantheon to define German
identity at the beginning of the XIX century. The soundtrack is an
elongated rendering of Gustav Holst’s Saturn movement in The
Planets, a symphony composed in 1916.
This
exhibition closes Louis Philippe Scoufaras’ Trilogy of Terror,
composed by three chronophageous films, Panic, N and Omphalos,
reinterpreting events drawn from Antique mythology. Featured through
single-shot video digital recordings, the three choreographed
performances are filmed in sensitive geo-political locations and cast
the actor Arthur Gillet as a Greek god archetype in straining
impersonations. The digitally decelerated music compositions,
originally written between 1911 and 1916, are part of a dramaturgy
that unites the three oeuvres in a symphony in three movements.
Innovation
proceeds here from a buried past, most particularly from Ancient
Greece. Archaism becomes a vector of modernity and an exploration of
our origins through the primordial energy of the myths.
Cut
like an archeological trove, Omphalos, 2017, Carrara marble, 184 x 45
x 45 cm, extends the artist’s counter-narrative. The Omphalos, the
stone originally wrapped in cloth by Rhea in the guise of Zeus to
deceive the anthropophagous Titan, has grown into adult size. Through
formal simplification, the symbolic object takes the shape of a
ghostly figure seated on a pedestal non finito, an imposing term of
350 kg made of lavish marble, fragment of a block used in the
reconstruction of Dresden.