My Hand Outstretched: Programme 3

Date: 24 February 2007 | Season: Robert Beavers 2007

MY HAND OUTSTRETCHED: PROGRAMME 3
Saturday 24 February 2007, at 12pm
London Tate Modern

Robert Beavers, Diminished Frame, 1970/2001, 16mm, b/w & colour, sound, 24 min 
There is in Diminished Frame a balance between a sense of the past seen in the views of West Berlin, filmed in black & white and a sense of the present in which I film myself showing how the colour is being created by placing filters in the camera’s aperture. It is the space of the city and of the filmmaker. I searched for signs of war’s aftermath and a few moments of ordinary existence. (Robert Beavers)

Robert Beavers, Still Light, 1970/2001, 16mm, colour, sound, 25 min
The first half of the film explores delicate nuances of lighting, colour and depth as Beavers shoots the face of a young man in various locales on the Greek island of Hydra, using a variety of customized masks and filters. The man’s face remains constant throughout, surrounded by iconic elements in the landscape, like a pulsating Renaissance portrait. Still Light’s second half was shot in the London flat of art critic Nigel Gosling. The two halves of Still Light bring to mind any number of structuralist binarisms: youth and age, creation and criticism, action and reflection, living landscape and mummified text. (Ed Halter, New York Press)

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