During the artist talk Alex Beriault invites you to explore her video „Sometimes a little Sin is good for the Soul“, presented in the GAK project space. In a dialoigcal setting there will be space for questions about this work, as well as about past and future projects of the artist.
In “Sometimes a little Sin is good for the Soul”, Alex Beriault creates an architectural in-between space of two abstract environments; one industrial, the other pure colour surface. Both settings collapse into each other to form the unclear circumstances of three women who appear without direction, decision-making power, or capacity for action.
The film’s subjects find themselves within some state of limbo; a dream-like condition, neither temporally nor spatially locatable. Repeatedly a glowing red “EXIT”-sign appears to offer the only clue in the form of language. It teases and perturbs its cold, taciturn surroundings, but no matter how often the sign reveals itself, it never points towards any clear way out. The camera continues to wander around, orienting itself on colours, shapes, and objects. It slows down, gropes, tilts.
“Sometimes a little Sin is good for the Soul” presents as a video sculpture in the GAK project space. Centered within a small, darkened room, a flat screen television monitor mounts to a vertical pole-dance-pole, echoing one of the main objects featured in the film. The glowing screen seems to float in the darkness, reminiscent of the lucid “EXIT”-sign. From the outside, one peers into the space through different layers of windows. Upon entering, the contours of the installation become sharper and the screen becomes an object that somehow alters itself into something window-like. As a result, the installation extends the setting of the film’s architectural labyrinth beyond the screen into the physical experience of the space.
The aphoristic title of the film alludes to a violation of a code of conduct. But instead of clear, causal relationships, space and time are manipulated at the intersection of performance, film and sculpture in such a way that it creates a mental interior space.
Alex Beriault (born 1990 in Toronto / Canada) is a master student of Rosa Barba at the HfK Bremen. In 2014 she received her BFA in Sculpture/Installation from OCAD University in Toronto.
GAK-Projekte is an exhibition series on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst.
An online artist talk (de/en) to the exhibition “Alex Beriault” in the GAK project space.
Special thanks to:
Filmbüro Bremen