Introduction
This exhibition presents six major works from the past 10 years. Radio Piece (Hong Kong), 2015 and Travel, 1996 – 2013 demonstrate Claerbout’s engagement with the possibilities of new imaging technologies and the changing parameters of represented space. The Quiet Shore, 2011 offers images of a sandy beach in Brittany known for its strong tides and the villas that inspired Hitchcock’s house in Psycho. Focusing on a single captured moment in time – a group of people occupied by something and uncanny glass-like waters – it speaks to the history of photography and suspense. Long Goodbye, 2007 impossibly bridges two different temporalities, whilst Cat and Bird at Peace, 1996 provides a restrained commentary on expectation, also recalling Claerbout’s only other solo exhibition in Scotland in 2005.
Claerbout’s newest work, The Pure Necessity (2016) enters a world of animation that is familiar to many of us. In it he has painstakingly re-animated the animals that are portrayed by the much-loved characters in Disney’s 1967 film The Jungle Book. Removing their human characteristics, Claerbout offers us a series of naturalistic encounters with the animals. David Claerbout presents a thorough experience of an artist whose work can mesmerise and beguile.