Christopher Petit / In What's Missing, Is Where Love Has Gone
curated by Louisa Elderton and Jelena Seng
15 March – 20 May 2017
Decad | Gneisenaustrasse 52 | 10961 Berlin | U7 Südstern
Photos: Roman März
‘Why
add to the vast electromagnetic slums of images?’ was Christopher Petit’s response when we first invited him
to produce an exhibition, followed by ‘Perhaps I’ll have a no show.’ I said
that could make for a tricky presentation — an empty gallery. Instead, he began
investigating how to simultaneously show and not show by withholding and
obscuring information using sound and vision. This exhibition reflects on our
mass consumption of imagery today — the result of a digital revolution that
relentlessly fires pictures into our eyes — and instead gives value to
communicating through what’s missing.
In
What’s Missing, Is Where Love Has Gone foregrounds a
pixelated image of David Bowie taken from the film The Man Who Fell to Earth
(1976, hereafter TMWFTE) — one
in a series of frame fragments photographed by Petit off television screens
through the years, exemplified by the exhibition’s Polaroids (taken in
1993-94). Bowie has significance for Petit for two reasons; firstly, Bowie
contributed two tracks to Petit’s road movie Radio On (1979), both
written while Bowie was in Berlin; and secondly, a scene in Radio On paid
homage to TMWFTE, Petit being fascinated by how ‘Bowie
watches a growing bank of TV monitors: surfing,’ prefiguring the explosion of
the image bank via the Internet.
In Show
No Show (2017), Bowie becomes a mechanism for concealment, leaving space
for the imagination to fill the gaps. Playing with scale, blown up
to giant proportions and printed on poster paper, the back of his head is
depicted, cropped flame-red hair reflecting the light, the angular contours of
a pale face nearly in profile but ostensibly withheld. We imagine him turning
to face us fully. The captivating image originates from TMWFTE’s pawn shop scene,
isolated from the screen’s top right-hand
corner, fixing time forever. An accompanying text is both inward and outward
looking, this enigmatic shot becoming a catalyst for Petit’s personal
reflection on the state of our contemporary world and his place in it.
Sound
often expresses what images or words cannot, igniting emotion through
invisibility. Coming Down in Berlin (2017) emits from a tentatively hung
speaker that sways with the breeze. Mixed by the audio producer Mordant, it
interweaves the soundtracks from Radio On and TMWFTE, overlaid with Petit’s spoken
stream-of-consciousness. A layered composition of fragmented ambient noise,
ominous mechanical ticking slides into pulsing melodies, interrupted by
voiceover glitches and the howl of a lone coyote baying at the moon.
Intermingled
are sounds from the proximate video Take It or Leave It (2017), Fats
Domino’s song ‘Blueberry Hill’ and Bowie’s own voice discernible. Deriving from
a low-quality YouTube clip (today’s online space of image overload, fittingly
predicted by the layered screens in TMWFTE),
the video is manipulated with colour field swathes of red. Bowie is repeatedly
fragmented, covered and revealed in a theatre of optical silence. Red is a
signifier of danger and pain, love and passion, and here, Bowie himself. Today,
we write from a moment in history where Bowie is missing, has moved on, the
distance in time between him and us becoming ever greater. In a fast-paced
world framed by endless images of ‘bad political hair’, I can’t help but turn
to the exhibition’s symbolic title to wonder if it really is in what’s missing,
is where love has gone.
—Text by Louisa Elderton
About
the artist
Christopher Petit is an internationally renowned filmmaker
and writer. His feature films include Radio On (1979), Flight to Berlin (1984), and
Chinese Boxes (1984). His film work has been the subject of several
foreign retrospectives at the Pesaro International Film Festival of New Cinema,
Italy; Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, Argentina; and the
49th Hof International Film Festival, Germany. As a writer, his novels include
Robinson, The Hard Shoulder, and The Psalm Killer, which was reissued in
2016 as a Picador Modern Classic with an introduction by Alan Moore. His
latest book The Butchers of Berlin – set in Berlin in 1943 – has been
optioned for development, as has his last novel, The Passenger. Due for UK
publication in autumn 2017 is his novel with the working title Requiem for
Monsters. Petit is the founder of the art project Museum of
Loneliness/Museo de la Soledad that includes the works GoogleMeGod;
Fragments of the Lost Civilisation; a vinyl album; and remixes and performance
titled Lee Harvey Oswald’s Last Dream; MoL live, Kino in Die Brücke. It
has been exhibited in London at the Whitechapel Gallery, Barbican Centre,
Sketch Gallery, Building F, and at the Glasgow and Oberhausen film festivals. Petit has
collaborated extensively with the writer Iain Sinclair. Their films include The
Falconer (1998), Asylum (2000), and London Orbital (2002). In 2011 Petit
and Sinclair exhibited their collaborative, immersive film installation,
Flying Down to Rio, at Sketch, London.
About
the curators
Louisa
Elderton is a curator, writer and editor based in Berlin. She received a Master’s
degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in Curating the Art Museum
(2010), presenting an exhibition about Christian iconography in historical and
contemporary art. From 2011-16 she curated solo exhibitions by Wim Wenders,
Lawrence Weiner, Francesco Clemente, Douglas Gordon, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Nasan
Tur and Rachel Howard, and the group exhibitions The Space Where I Am and
I Was Once Lonelyness, for Blain|Southern. She has contributed to magazines
including Artforum, Art Review, Frieze, Art Monthly, Flash Art, Monopol,
Elephant Magazine, Apollo, The Burlington Magazine, Vogue, Berlin Art
Link, House & Garden and The White Review. Writing for Phaidon’s
Vitamin P3 about new-wave contemporary painters, she is currently
Project Editor of their forthcoming Vitamin book, exploring artists’ contemporary
use of clay and ceramics.
Jelena
Seng is a curator based in Berlin. She received a Master’s degree from the
Courtauld Institute of Art in History of Art (2010). From 2010-16 she
worked with Isaac Julien, Conrad Shawcross, Francesca Woodman, Hernan Bas, John
Kørner, Christian Holstad, and Ian Hamilton Finlay at Victoria Miro. In 2015
she curated Tyrants & Sirens, an exhibition of work by Yana
Naidenov and Sofia Stevi for 53 Beck Road, London (UK), as well as Areopagus
Königin with Eleni Bagaki, Zoe Giabouldaki, Maria Hassabi, Katerina Kana,
Natasha Papadopolou, Tula Plumi, Rallou Panagiotou, Nana Sashini, Sofia Stevi,
and Iris Touliatou at Parallel Vienna (Vienna, Austria). She is a founding
member of the Chinati Contemporary Council in Marfa, Texas.
About
Decad
Decad is a not-for-profit art space located in
Berlin-Kreuzberg taking focus on the mutual influence of contemporary art and
critical discourse within the public sphere. Their programme comprises four
chapters: bi-weekly artist talks and critical lectures; ten-week exhibitions
organised by guest curators; a research library on the socio-political
significance of visual culture; and an archive on socially-engaged art
practice.
Decad’s
opening hours:
The
exhibition runs from Tuesday 15 March–Saturday 20 May 2017.
Opening
hours are every Thursday–Saturday, 14:00–19:00, or by appointment.
A
publication of new images and writing has been produced alongside the
exhibition, edited by Jelena Seng and designed by Cskw.
A
retrospective of Chrisopher Petit’s films takes place over the span of the
exhibition 'In What’s Missing, Is Where Love Has Gone.' These include Radio On
(1979), Flight to Berlin (1984), Chinese Boxes (1984), The Falconer (1998) and
Asylum (2000).
We
cordially invite you to join us:
Saturday
25th March, 7pm: 'Radio On'
Saturday
8th April, 7pm: 'Flight to Berlin'
Saturday
22nd April, 7pm: 'Chinese Boxes'
Saturday
6th May, 7pm: 'The Falconer Saturday'
20th
May, 5pm: 'Asylum'