French artist Julien Maire makes U.S. debut at Wood Street Galleries

“Matter and Memory”

Julien Maire

Wood Street Galleries

601 Wood St.

412-471-5605

Art… “Matter and Memory”

Julien Maire

Wood Street Galleries

601 Wood St.

412-471-5605

Art possesses the ability not only to create, but also to deconstruct the world.

Berlin-based French installation artist Julien Maire deconstructs audiovisual media processes and then re-imagines these media in a simple, provocative manner that questions the way people’s perception of reality operates. In his U.S. debut at Wood Street Galleries, Maire experiments with forms of projection and creates a dialogue between the worlds of analog and digital media.

His work “Exploding Camera” re-imagines the reality of Sept. 11 through the eyes of Cmdr. Massoud, an opponent to the Taliban killed two days earlier by two al-Qaida suicide bombers posing as journalists. A video camera that Maire took apart and video displays project-imagined memories of this moment that was overshadowed by the events of Sept. 11. By reinterpreting a historic event through a destroyed medium, Maire challenges reality and its memory.

Murray Horne, curator of Wood Street Galleries, first discovered Maire’s work when he saw his live performance “Digit” two years ago in Europe. “Digit” shows Maire sitting at a desk, and as he slides his hand across a piece of blank paper, printed text mysteriously appears. The audience can come close to the writer, who remains absorbed in his task. Maire also performed this work for his Wood Street Galleries opening.

This is the first North American show for Maire, whose performances and installations have been displayed around the world — from Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, to Sculpture Space in Shanghai, China. An artist on the rise, Maire’s collective body of work was recently nominated at the “World Technology Awards” in New York.

Horne explained that the gallery focuses on showcasing new media by artists on the rise and that often these works are visually and sonically confrontational. Horne said that Maire’s work provided a different viewpoint on new media than is usually seen.

“This show is more introspective,” Horne said, “and is perceived between the eyes and the mind as the mind is trying to register what it sees. It is more contemplative and demanding.”

Like “Digit,” much of Maire’s work possesses an intriguing air of mystery that provokes the curiosity of the audience and challenges people to explore and look closer. Horne says that the experience of the show depends heavily upon the inquiring mind of the viewer and his or her desire to look closely and explore.

In one work, Maire explores the relationship between analog and digital media by simplifying back to the zoetrope, one of the earliest forms of moviemaking that works similarly to animation. On first glance, the work appears to project digital film images onto large screens on the opposite side of the room. A close look inside the workings of the projector, however, will reveal these are not projections of images but of physical objects. Maire has created glass shapes and rigged them to rotate inside the projector as they are projected.

Maire deconstructs and then reworks all of the media in his shows by hand, creating an intimate, physical relationship with the machine aspects of film.

“The show feels very French,” Horne said. “It all works within the mind. You know that the artist has been working on a small, microscopic process.”

The hands-on attention to detail is stunning and challenges the viewer to look at the works with a similar attention to detail. The exhibition encourages its viewers to participate in the works and create new forms of their own. One work invites viewers to play with shavings from ball bearings as their movements are projected onto a monitor. Maire challenges the audience to join him in actively re-imagining the reality of the world.