The Quiet Machine by David Claerbout at Fondazione MAST

Fondazione MAST presents The Quiet Machine, the first major solo exhibition in Italy by the Belgian artist David Claerbout (Kortrijk, 1969).

Overview

The exhibition, curated by Francesco Zanot, is one of the most comprehensive retrospectives of his work, exploring the relationship between industry, technology and nature through nine film installations – including two previously unseen works – and a dozen drawings, arranged across a linear exhibition itinerary on the first floor of MAST and a site-specific installation on the ground floor.

Claerbout began his career as a painter and gradually moved towards photography, film, and new media. His reflection on technology is a fundamental part of his artistic practice and contributes to the definition of a multifaceted and complex artistic language. His works are the result of an extremely sophisticated and constantly updated computational infrastructure: photographs taken in different places and at different times are used as source material and recomposed into a single visual flow; 3D modelling, animation, generative software and artificial intelligence all contribute to creating images that are as realistic as they are unreal, but with technology never taking centre stage and the complexity of the processes remaining in the background.

Time has always been one of the main themes around which Claerbout’s work revolves; he investigates it, shapes it, fragments it, and stretches it. The duration of his works can reach extreme proportions, ranging up to an entire day or even extending to infinity, as in the case of his real-time computer-generated films. In his work, events no longer exist, reduced to the bare minimum of their potential and almost dissolved into duration: attention thus turns to the process, turning the works into “quiet machines” amidst the proliferation of images that are continually produced, consumed and forgotten.

A recurring theme in this exhibition is labour: the work of the protagonists of his films, the theoretical and technical work of the artist, the work of the machine (software, algorithms, rendering engines), and the interpretative work of the viewers.

Nature is often depicted, but without being separated from the technological world. The forest and the hangar, the sun and the algorithm, plant growth and industrial production are all governed by the same principle: nothing is static; nothing is ever truly complete. 

The 12 drawings featured in the exhibition represent a further form of the artist’s reflection, in which technological complexity gives way to the elemental relationship between thought, manual skill and graphic mark.

Claerbout’s films are genuine constructions, mobile, welcoming structures, luminous and serene (but not necessarily reassuring), which continue to resonate long after our viewing of them is over, replacing the element of surprise with something able to settle in our memory.