FRONT(A) / audio-video installation


Technique: Video Full HD, collage manipulated image
Duration: 9:44′ min, loop
2011


Work Front(a) is a spatial installation with a small video screen, placed on the floor in darkened room. Dimensions of the screen are 25 cm by 14 cm and it shows miniature figures marching in a column, like some kind of parade. IPlaced in the corners of the room are the speakers that amplify the sound of this column.

Photo documentation 1
Set-up at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria, Pula, Croatia

Photo documentation 2
Set-up at the SC Gallery (opening evening), Zagreb, Croatia 

Photo documentation
Set-up at the SC Gallery (opening evening), Zagreb, Croatia

Video documentation
Set-up at the SC Gallery (opening evening), Zagreb, Croatia

Text from catalogue

New Manipulations in an Isolated Space

At his solo exhibition in the SC Gallery, Goran Škofić, one of the most interesting video-artists of a younger generation, exhibits only one work; his new video-installation, as a continuation of his artistic explorations from the series of works at his last solo exhibition White. In this new project he uses some of the elements from the previous series of works and deals with them in a visual, conceptual and spatial sense. In a wider context, these elements are also a continuation of his explorations from earlier works, like the series of works Corpus. These include self-representation, positioning and multiplication of his own character, repetition, manipulation, absurd and a game. However, Fronta brings about somewhat different relations. This exhibition is more focused on the exhibition space and perception of the observer. “In this work, I sought to place the video work in a spatial context, thus tinkering with the observer’s perceptionand the contrast of spatial relationships in terms of ‘big’ and ‘small’,” Goran asserts.

Ambience, spatial organization of the video projection, and especially its audio elements, are the key elements of the new work, in which the artist focuses on the intensity of the experience. The formative elements can be found in crossing the visual borders and frame of the artwork, the ones relating to the spatial disposition, as well as the more active incorporation of sound as an important formative element. More attention is devoted to sound in Fronta. Sound is not merely something that accompanies the projected images, but it has a more important role in forming an invisible sensory volume of the space of the work, audio-visual environment experienced as a unit.

“White is the phase in my work that describes experimenting with a pure naked body (without the influence of the background)”, claims Goran Škofić. In this work as well, Škofić reaches for an already tested method of using his own character. By using black and white image and hybrid sound, we follow the images of army and soldiers, row, parade, images that flow continuously, passing through the frame, representing a mass of uniform bodies as a representation of power. Artist’s body is multiplied, dressed in a conventional dark suit of a serious yuppie, without some specific identity characteristics. “The work depicts an ordinary man who becomes a sort of corporation by means of multiplication“ continues the author.

The passing of a singlefigure, then of two, followed by an entire army of multiplied figures, as well as their permutations, form a sequence of uniform, repetitive actions that take place within the simple white geometry of the frame with minor transformations. Action takes place on the white rectangular background. The camera has a fixed bird’s-eye view, above the protagonist, providing a comprehensive gaze in which the man, isolated from the environment and placed outside of the context of reality, is presented as a graphic symbol on a background void of objects in hybrid time. Hints of the world of objects have been done away with to emphasize the repetitiveness of action. Audio-visual recording emphasizes this repetitiveness of individual movements and action in general. We use it to see the artificiality of the scene, its continuous character, as the image of the world devoid of coordinates of reality.

Branka Benčić