Visual artist Anne Lorenz

Swiss visual artist Anne Lorenz presents works that were developed during her residency in Bangalore at Sumukha Gallery. [dated January 2009]

Swiss visual artist Anne Lorenz presents works that were developed and realised during her four months stay in Bangalore at Sumukha Gallery on Tuesday 27 January.

Recent video works by Anne Lorenz

Over the last ten to fifteen years Anne Lorenz has built up a diverse body of work, brought together by a common line of investigation: her profound interest in the way we behave and its relation to our psyche. On the one hand her investigations into body language reveal a commonality of human existence, expressed in physical rhythms and motions that are shared world wide, the at times banal routines that provide choreography for daily life around the globe. On the other she uncovers small differences in physical behaviour that point to the cruelness of individuality, suggest a dislocation between the interior self and the public self, and embody expressions of solitude and insecurity.

When studying Fine Art in Germany, Spain and the UK she focussed on object-based and installation work. After graduating in 1996 the installations became increasingly site-specific and, where earlier work had suggested the presence of people and hinted at narrative, her work soon broadened to include performers and time-based elements. Interested by the disciplines of directing, stage-design and costume Lorenz worked in this capacity on several dance and music-theatre productions. This experience was reflected in a series of film and performance works, under her artistic direction, which employed a mixture of trained and untrained performers. Currently she is concentrating on creating multi-channel video works, which are realised in close collaboration with local people and inspired by the physical and sociological make up of the locations.

She loves me she loves me not 2008/2009 3-channel Video Projection with sound, DV Measurements: variable Duration: 25 min. Artistic Direction: Anne Lorenz Casting & Crew: Aspect Professionals, Nithin Muralidharan Cinematography: Nagesh Raj Sound: Yashas Shetty Voice: Anne Lorenz Video Consultancy: Bison Singh Oeil Exterieur: Barnaby Drabble

A visitor to Bangalore, the artist Anne Lorenz brings with her a particular practice of seeing. Her newly produced three-screen video projection She loves me, she loves me not is in equal parts a document of what has caught her eye in the city and a meditation on her own vulnerability. The artist describes her experience by observing the city’s rhythms, not explicitly those one associates with a public urban space, but rather those conditioned by the private space of the body, its capabilities and its needs. She observes the socialised body, linked to others by its activities and understands the city as a web of these relations.

In this work she carefully depicts people at work, asleep, eating, or praying and explores in these sequences the meditative quality of repetitive movement, and with this the line between comfort and discomfort. As in former works she restages things that she has observed in her new environment, drawing attention to the patterns of everyday life that, at first sight, appear unremarkable. Precisely this attention to normality and its presentation in the gallery space, produces a secondary impulse in the work which moves away from the descriptive and towards the narrative; constituting an unresolved story in which the actors, the artist and the viewers play equal roles.

The artist maintains that the work is neither about the people depicted in the images, nor about her experiences but about the viewer. She opens up a dialogue, through her observations on the activities of others, asking how we feel about ourselves, how comforted or pained we are by everyday life, and how delicate or vulnerable we feel in our socialised bodies and the cities that they populate.

In her hands (an interview with Madhu Nataraj) 2009 Videowork with sound, HDV/DV Measurements: variable Duration: 7 min. Artistic Direction: Anne Lorenz £Performance: Madhu Nataraj Cinematography: B. R. Viswanath Video Consultancy: Bison Singh Oeil Exterieur: Barnaby Drabble

Driven by her interest in the way we communicate through our body, both intentionally and unconsciously, Lorenz has frequently made work in collaboration with dancers and choreographers, exploring movement and improvisation through the medium of video. In her Hands: an interview with Madhu Nataraj is the first in a proposed series of short portraits, for which she adopts the traditional format of the filmed interview. In the work she poses questions to her friend, the Bangalore based Kathak and contemporary dancer and choreographer Madhu Nataraj.