Performance / Video: Absence et présence (2013)
Video title: Absence et présence - performances de peinture
Duration: 4 minutes 58 seconds (excerpt)
Production date: Copyright © 2013 Kakim Goh - All rights reserved
• Kakim Goh - Painting and directing
• Florence So - Editing
The video “Absence et présence” documents a series of five action painting improvisations by visual artist Kakim Goh.
Created in the artist’s studio in Montreal, each painting in the series was conceived through an improvised performance that drew on the concepts of “absence and presence” as points of departure for reflections on the dance of life and death, tackling form and formlessness, overlapping the boundaries between abstraction and figuration and articulating memory and experience.
The painting process is the performance. Each action painting performance was filmed from a bird’s eye perspective from a video camera suspended twelve feet high from the ceiling. The entire creative process was documented in one-take and later sped up in the editing process, revealing the spontaneity, drama and physicality of the artist's methodology. The videos tell “stream of consciousness” narratives through sequential transformations that the paintings undergo, raising critical and thematic issues such as culture, flux, ritual, transformation and the temporal. The videos offer audiences a fascinating gateway into the creative experience, complete with the impasses and exhilarations of the rich process of discovery.
The resulting videos and paintings debuted in the two-person exhibition “Absence et presénce” at la Maison de la Culture du Plateau-Mont Royal in Montreal, Canada from May 3 to June 2, 2013. The show was presented by Festival Accès Asie as part of its 2013 edition in collaboration with la Maison de la Culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal.
Duration: 4 minutes 58 seconds (excerpt)
Production date: Copyright © 2013 Kakim Goh - All rights reserved
• Kakim Goh - Painting and directing
• Florence So - Editing
The video “Absence et présence” documents a series of five action painting improvisations by visual artist Kakim Goh.
Created in the artist’s studio in Montreal, each painting in the series was conceived through an improvised performance that drew on the concepts of “absence and presence” as points of departure for reflections on the dance of life and death, tackling form and formlessness, overlapping the boundaries between abstraction and figuration and articulating memory and experience.
The painting process is the performance. Each action painting performance was filmed from a bird’s eye perspective from a video camera suspended twelve feet high from the ceiling. The entire creative process was documented in one-take and later sped up in the editing process, revealing the spontaneity, drama and physicality of the artist's methodology. The videos tell “stream of consciousness” narratives through sequential transformations that the paintings undergo, raising critical and thematic issues such as culture, flux, ritual, transformation and the temporal. The videos offer audiences a fascinating gateway into the creative experience, complete with the impasses and exhilarations of the rich process of discovery.
The resulting videos and paintings debuted in the two-person exhibition “Absence et presénce” at la Maison de la Culture du Plateau-Mont Royal in Montreal, Canada from May 3 to June 2, 2013. The show was presented by Festival Accès Asie as part of its 2013 edition in collaboration with la Maison de la Culture du Plateau-Mont-Royal.
Kakim Goh performing in “Absence et présence”, produced in Montreal, Canada, 2013. Still video frame: © Kakim Goh