Sam Taylor Wood for the Venice Biennale 2007
Sam Taylor Wood presented three new films in the Ukrainian Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Returning to themes of emotional isolation, sexuality and self awareness, these new film works appear upon first glance to be static photographic images, dark and painterly - a dancer mid leap across a stage, a man sheltering in a doorway lighting a cigarette, a naked Venus figure draped with the dead body of a mute swan. The images slowly reveal themselves to be film, static apart from the dancer's twitching muscles and involuntary blinking or the flickering flame of a lighter and hair blown in the breeze or the twitching of toes as the swan appears to slowly decompose, feathers fall as it swells and sighs.
'After Van Halen' 2007
DVD
Duration: 4 minutes 30 seconds
Courtesy Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
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