Lisa Tan
Language Barrier
May 22–August 30, 2009
Centro Cultural Montehermoso
C/ Fray Zacarías 2
01001 · Vitoria-Gasteiz
SPAIN
From May 22nd to August 30th, Centro Cultural Monthermoso Kulturunea presents the projects selected from the more than 500 entries submitted to the ART AND RESEARCH 08 annual open call. The eight artists' projects and one curatorial project selected have been produced by Montehermoso in the 2008–2009 season, and will be presented in the Centre's exhibition rooms.
ION ARREGI (San Sebastian, Spain, 1982) | Fondo I: Estimas, variaciones y contradicciones románticas.
MARCELO EXPÓSITO (Puerto Llano, Spain, 1966) | No reconciliados (nadie sabe lo que un cuerpo puede).
AURÉLIEN FROMENT (Angers, France, 1976) | The Fourth Wall
ANDRÉ GUEDES (Lisbon, Portugal, 1971) | Airotiv
IRENE KOPELMAN (Córdoba, Argentina, 1974) | El vuelo de Lévy.
NATHANIEL MELLORS (Doncaster, United Kingdom, 1974) | Giantbum.
PIA RÖNICKE (Roskilde, Denmark, 1974) | Facing.
LISA TAN (New York, USA, 1973) | Language Barrier
'Language Barrier' is an installation consisting of two video projections, placed along different positions within a darkened passage. The imagery in the piece presents the glass-encased entrances of two high-rise apartment buildings in a cosmopolitan city. The entrances are lit and exposed like lucid aquariums. The street-level vantage point turns the viewer into a late-night passerby, watching for inhabitants or the glance of the lobby doorman. The minimal piece uses a recurring mechanism in one of the projections that produces a dreamlike rhythm, as if walking down an endless street and passing the same space over and over again. Lisa Tan's work often draws from cinema and literature, as well as personal and collective history, to deal with longing and loss as constant conditions of being. Language Barrier is one in a line of discreet works that involve an interest in the conditions of nighttime, as experienced in the context of iconic urbanism.
—L.T.
Lisa Tan, Language Barrier, 2009. Two-channel video installation, still image from projection 2.