Share

"Almost Romantic" brings together two young artists from completely different backgrounds. Cecilia Nygren hails from Sweden, while Gianfranco Foschino was born and raised in Chile. Their video works included in this exhibition resonate with each other by virtue of an aesthetic that is neither geo-political nor cultural, but is nonetheless felt in the works selected for this project; yet this correspondence doesn't derive from their artist processes, for each artist works in a substantively different way.

Nygren, for instance, makes what could be called experimental if not impressionistic narratives. Sometimes elements of a work are projected as a single channel piece as in "Tom" (2010), included in this exhibition. Sometimes segments are projected in screens positioned in different spaces altogether. Foschino on the other hand makes single channel videos in a manner that echoes certain Structuralist or concept-based films of the sixties, although the result looks nothing like these antecedents. In his work, shoot locations are sought for their aesthetic and potential for on-screen activity. (In the case of "Home", the village where it was filmed was destroyed in the earthquake of February.) Foschino then leaves the place where he set up the camera, leaving the camera still running. After what may be several hours, he returns with his footage to the editing suite, saving what is for him the best section. The final piece contains no edits; there is no pretense that the author of this work is somehow absent, yet we are left with the result of a partial, chance operation.

Cecilia Nygren: Tom, 2010

HDV video, 5 minutes 05 seconds

Click on image to enlarge.

Nygren's "Tom" derives from her interest in the Nordic Romantic tradition of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Her choice of subject matter, however, evinces today's more global context. Her hero(ine), Tom, is taken from a true-to-life story of Tom Thompson, an early Canadian pleine air painter of the 1920s, who exists, still, as legend after his untimely disappearance in the wilds of Algonquin Park, a place that had been a source for so much of his art.

The Romantic tradition is also inherent in Foschino's works included here with their snapshots of life in various villages of central and southern Chile. The subtlety of the movement of the hens in "Home" (2009) and the seemingly choreographed action in "Q.E.P.D." (2010) and "La Fenétre" (2008) along with the environment in Nygren's "Tom" are as sublime as what the practitioners of historical Romanticism had hoped to achieve in their work.

Gianfranco Foschino was born in Santiago, Chile in 1983. He was educated at UBA University, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and received a degree in cinema in 2008 from UNIACC University, Santiago. Group shows and screenings of his work include "Still Moving," curated by Pedro Torres, Stuffinablank (2010) "Home," The 23rd Images Festival, Toronto (2010); "Less Time Than Space" at the Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro and the Palais de Glace, Buenos Aires (2010); "La Espera, Home, Barbie and La Fenetra," 7th Les Inattendus Film Festival, Lyon, France (2010); "Le Espera," 6th Cinema Iliteraires, Brussels (2009); and the 4th International Streaming Festival, The Hague (2009).

Cecilia Nygren was born in 1980 in Skurtrask, Sweden, and was educated at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm. Her work was recently included in "Girls! Girls! Girls - Through the lens of the female gaze," La Central, Montral (2010); and "One-Minute-Academy," Bastard, Stockholm (2009). She currently is in the residency program at the Banff Centre, Alberta.

Curated by Christopher Eamon.