Space melts like sand running through one's fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless shreds: To write: to try meticulously to retain something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.(1)

The ordinary is often featureless, and, as such, easily forgotten; memory, conversely thrives on elaboration, artfulness and intricacy. Although Hans Op de Beeck's videos and installations are indeed elaborate constructions, they purposely lack the detail of our real surroundings, yet it is precisely artifice that is productive in triggering individual recollection. Indeed, an abundance of detail may be detrimental to the work's ability to transgress its own physicality; a surfeit of information allows the viewer to become trapped in the tangible aspects of the illusion, while the mind actually searches for a means of transcending its physical, and thus reductive nature. But it is the very quality of the illusion that makes it arresting. [...]

(1) George Perec: Species of Spaces and other Pieces, ed./ trans. John Sturrock, England 1997, p. 92.

Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010