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  • Melvin Moti

    Melvin Moti (b. 1977) is a Rotterdam based artist who works primarily in film, as well as with sound and book works. His work has been shown widely in Europe, including solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Galleria T293, Napoli; and De Ateliers, Amsterdam. His work has also been shown at the Wattis Institute, San Francisco; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Baltic Triennial; and Witte de With, Rotterdam, among others.

Exhibitions

  • No Show

    MELVIN MOTI
    September 8–October 13, 2007

    Melvin’s Moti’s film practice finds a focus in the reconstructions of memories, whether reenacting the perambulating descriptions of surrealist sleep experiments or narrating the content and emotion of absent pictures. Moti’s 2004 No Show is a 24-minute film based on a guided tour given at the Hermitage Museum during the Second World War. Until 1944, the museum removed its collection of paintings and other artworks for safe-keeping, and its galleries were bare save for empty frames hanging on the walls. In 1943 a guide showed a group of soldiers through the vacant rooms, describing from memory the paintings in the Hermitage’s collection including works by Rembrandt and Fra Angelico. Moti presents this historic tour aurally, while the camera is trained on an empty gallery, a backdrop for the imagined works. Speaking to both individual and collective memory, particularly in the face of chaos and adversity, Moti’s film is a beautiful, spare work that evokes a complex subjective response. The film is accompanied by a small artist book of the same name that provides further research insights into the reconstructed event.

    This exhibition has specifically been supported by the Vancouver Foundation and the Ramada Downtown Vancouver.

    Postscript 31: Althea Thauberger on No Show (PDF)

Talks & Events

Artist Talk

MELVIN MOTI
September 8, 2007

Artist MELVIN MOTI will discuss his exhibition No Show at Artspeak.