celebrity slo-mo
Video portraitist Robert Wilson brings his collection of the world’s slowest-moving celebrities to the Yekaterina Cultural Foundation. “The Voom Portraits” will have you so mesmerized you may just subscribe to the television network.
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As if in a scene from a very wet dream, Brad Pitt is standing drenched in the night rain in white boxer shorts and white socks. He’s holding a water gun and glowering at you. Very slowly, very deliberately, he levels the gun and squirts. Five times. Then he returns to glowering. This very intimate moment with Mr. Pitt is brought to you by theater director Robert Wilson, whose “Voom Portraits” are dropping by Moscow on the first stop of their world tour. From October 2 to November 11, Yekaterina Cultural Foundation hosts an exhibition of his video portraits of some of the world’s most recognizable celebrities, as well as a stray porcupine and snow owl. This series, which debuted at New York’s Phillips de Pury and Paula Cooper galleries in January, was commissioned by Voom Network for a reported seven-figure sum, in order to promote high-definition television. Cutting-edge technology brings viewers closer to celebrities than ever before: on a 65-inch plasma screen, you can discern each drop of rain rolling down Pitt’s torso. Wilson also puts his famous subjects in roles they’ve never played before. Inspiration for the portraits came from all directions, including history (Jeanne Moreau as Mary, Queen of Scots), mythology (Mikhail Baryshnikov as St. Sebastian, stuck with arrows), film (Princess Caroline of Monaco as her own mother, Grace Kelly, in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”), paintings (Robert Downey Jr. on a dissection table like in Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolas Tulp”) and literature (Winona Ryder as Winnie, the protagonist of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days,” who gets buried up to her neck in sand). In other cases, such as Pitt’s, they simply depict a colorful, surreal character whose past and future are a mystery. At the press conference prior to the Monday night opening, Wilson compared his works to “fire in the fireplace,” meaning they are just there — it’s your choice to look at them or not. This is, however, greatly understating the case. While normal paintings in a museum receive a once-over, then fade into the background, Wilson’s works attract crowds who stand transfixed as the video endlessly loops. Noah Khoshbin, who is in charge of the exhibition at the Yekaterina Foundation, called the pieces “groundbreaking in the history of art and video art,” as Wilson has apparently captured “the infinite image.” Well, at the very least, Wilson has revolutionized wall art. To enhance the work’s surrealism, Wilson coached his subjects in the art of “minimal movement,” an artistic trademark he developed over his 40-year career in theater. In other words, move slowly. Very. Slowly. Pitt’s firing of the gun is the most expansive gesture in Wilson’s heavily choreographed world. Most pieces draw you to the tiniest of movements — the tap of mad butcher Steve Buscemi’s foot as he stands behind a bloody carcass; the gentle swing of burlesque star Dita Von Teese; the snail-paced changes of light on Ryder’s face. Shooting the portraits was also excruciatingly slow. An average shoot required a team of 30-35 people, subjects spent two hours in make-up and three hours on the set, while technicians took four to five hours to get the lighting just right. In this respect, “the portraits are quite traditional,” Wilson comments. Like portrait subjects of yore, subjects had to clear their mind and sit tight for extended periods of time. Moreover, “[I wanted them] to inwardly feel what they were expressing,” he explains. The end result is clips ranging from 30 seconds to 20 minutes in length, which are then seamlessly looped. Moscow was chosen as the first stop outside of the U.S. for the tour because, in terms of contemporary art, the city is “one of the most important places in the world right now,” Wilson said. For the Yekaterina Foundation, Wilson selected 23 works that would complement each other in the gallery space. The larger rooms are an eclectic cocktail party of celebrities you would never imagine seeing in one place (for example, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp and Princess Caroline). It’s like heaven as imagined by a reader of The National Enquirer. Some works, including the portrait of Ryder and a whole series devoted to Salma Hayek, receive their own rooms, although the artist claims he has no favorites. “It’s like your children,” he explains. Our favorite Wilson kid was the slobbering Briard dog guarding the entrance to the cloakroom. The visit also coincides with the advent of hi-tech television to our capital. Matthew Shattuck, a representative for Voom Network, promised “Voom channels within a year in Moscow.” The artistic possibilities are endless, but as your mother always said, don’t stand too close to the television. “The Voom Portraits” are on display at the Yekaterina Cultural Foundation until Nov. 11. |
