LOOP '08 -The international video art fair
May 8 - 10, 2008

Presented artist: Marc Aschenbrenner
IM ABRI | IN THE ROCK SHELTER, 2008, (8:00 min)

The video works by the artist Marc Achenbrenner, born in 1971 in Linz, transport the viewer into a mysterious, fantastical and sometimes rather uncanny parallel universe, loaded with complex symbolism.
The main focus is usually on the performative act itself, which is very much a physical expression of a pre-determined dramaturgy for the camera. Aschenbrenner’s film shots, the almost cinematographic composition, and the precision of the sequences, indicate an action that has been staged for the camera. In this way the authenticity of the performance is preserved, while a disconcerting intimacy is also created, despite the use of the media of film. In close-ups, and at times dramatic sequences, we are confronted with the artist or his protagonists writhing like tadpoles in a bathtub filled with algae-green primeval slime or floating weightlessly in shiny gold foil. The characters, their fetishes and masquerades, as well as the metaphorical oscillation between primeval soup and space ship or amniotic sac and hot air balloon, derive from an erotic, imaginative world, and the artist provides us with a densely composed insight into this world.

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