Sarah Charles
LA NUIT AMÉRICAINE
pletely new world. He is an artist who
creates architecture by using cameras and
computers. He uses pictures of existing
buildings, or of roofs as is the case in his
contribution to Fafade 2012, and digitaliz-
es the images into a new imagined archi
tecture. In doing so, his imagination can
run free as he is not bound by the same
limitations experienced by architects.
Dujardin uses his images as the building
blocks of an illusion. His constructions
look amazingly real, but taken as a whole
they are impossible to build. Appearances
deceive. From that point of view, his archi
tectonic fantasies remind us of depictions
by M.C. Esscher.
Dujardin not only highlights details,
but also singularises them by bringing
them together in a coherent image of a
new construction. In doing so he forces
us to observe the images very carefully.
We are compelled to discover what is not
right. It is like the photo of an urban land
scape used on the poster for Fafade 2012;
does this picture represent an existing or
a new reality?
How can we see what cannot be?
Dujardin confronts us with trusted natu
ral laws in the way we build our world. He
uses the same measurements and dimen
sions and even the same formal language
we have used to build our houses since
the dawn of civilisation. He creates a new
architecture, which is a spitting image of
the existing one. An architecture we both
know and do not know. With special thanks
to Studieburo Mouton; BVBA GUNCO BV;
De Melker Buisconcepten.
www. filipdu j ardin. be
We like living in an illusion. We like believ
ing in a world other than the one we live in.
We voluntarily participate in the illusions
found in stories, on television, in commer
cials and in our cinemas. In a sense a city
is an illusion as well. Behind the historical
fa£ades, which we steadfastly upkeep, life
unfolds in the year 2012. We cherish a rich
past, even if it is just (in part) a product of
the imagination. As if' encapsulates the
movie we regard as reality.
The ways in which we experience the
illusion is central to the work of the art
ist-duo Sarah Charles. Movies are their
most important source of inspiration, and
are a fine example of an illusion, yet the
story of a reality at the same time. A reali
ty played out on screen, with the power to
hypnotize us.
On a billboard we see an image of a
night-time recording session, which took
place in the very same park in which the
billboard is posted. We not only see a
scene as perceived in a movie, we also see
how it was made. It is as if we are watch
ing a play in real-time, but we can also see
behind the scenes, where we discover that
the decor is made of cardboard. Sarah
Charles reveal the lamps needed to illumi
nate the nocturnal set, the tripods and the
smoke emanating from a machine. This
'making of' is a nod to the work of Fred-
erico Fellini and duplicates the reality we
perceive. The image is a still, which sug
gests a movie, but we do not see a movie,
because it only exists in our imagination
or memory. The reason why Sarah
Charles chose this exact location is due to
its resemblance to the scene from Alfred
Hitchcocks' movie The Lodger: A Story of
the London Fog (1927), in which the plot
unravelled in a similar place.
The effect is a mise en abyme; it resem
bles the tin of Droste cacao (a Dutch
iconic image), imprinted with the image
of a nun carrying a tray with a Droste
tin, which in turn is imprinted with the
nun's image, and so on, ad infinitum. In
the same way, the images of reality in
Sarah Charles' installation merge. On
the one hand there is the reality of the
park where the billboard stands, and on
the other hand there is the image of the
park. On top of that, Hitchcock's scene
is suggested. This is the Droste-effect in
cinematographic terms: the story within
a story. Why do we like illusion so much?
This is the question that is key to Sarah
Charles' work.
The illusion likes us too. The billboard
with metal tubes is a nostalgic reference
to the ancient movie culture, but is fore
most a PR-tool. It has been and is still
used to promote movies, and to seduce
the masses to buy a ticket.
The world in which we live, is the
world we make. A world resembling a
movie we would like to see. We are super
numerary actors in our own movies.
www.charlessarah.com
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