Anses de Paimpol et de Saint-Malo

Anses de Paimpol et de Saint-Malo
Bays of Paimpol and Saint-Malo

Rina Sherman

Vidéo, 9 Min, 2013

For many years people encouraged me to visit Brittany, saying that coming from Africa, I would enjoy the ‘wild’ landscapes. They must have had the Atlantic seaboard in mind for there was nothing wild about slowly sailing on an almost wind-still day into the bay of Paimpol in barely moving scenes of toy sized islets and lighthouses reminiscent of the moving décor elements in the film Farinelli (1994). The end of day shifts into the stillness of the coming night, as colour and mood glows into deep flamingo pinks over Saint-Malo bay.

Bays of Paimpol and Saint-Malo

Rina Sherman

Sailing on a windstill day, Rina Sherman creates a barely moving landscape of the bay of Paimpol that reminds us of the film, Farinelli's decor, and, as the end of day meets with the stillness of the coming night, color and mood shift to deep flamingo pinks over Saint-Malo bay.

Lors de la dérive d'une journée sans vent, Rina Sherman dessine un paysage à peine en mouvement de l'anse de Paimpol, qui nous rappelle le décor du film Farinelli, et, lorsque le jour tombant rencontre le silence de la nuit venant, couleurs et ambiance retrouvent le rose flamant sur l'anse de Saint-Malo.

Cities & Elsewhere - Villes & Ailleurs

Tableaux Mouvants

Rina Sherman

In Cities & Elsewhere, a collection of tableaux mouvants, I draw on the traditions of the tableaux vivants of Louis XIV, Delsartean ‘Living pictures’ and the later poses plastiques performance activities, as well as landscape painting and early landscape photography. My work as a performance artist with Possession Arts in Johannesburg in the early 1980s further informs the live still scenes filmed in Cities. Our living tableaux such as ‘Schreber’s Chicken’ and ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ were set on stage and drew on the transformation of everyday scenes and duration performances, inspired by artists such as Philip Glass, the Wooster Group, Elizabeth LeCompte, Spalding Gray, Benjamin Patterson.

In the first two pieces of Cities, the images present everyday landscapes with little or no movement and minimal sound: a door closing, the cry of a seagull passing, footsteps going by… In time, the counterpoint between film, painting and photography, the reference to everyday reality interchanges with references to other dimensions of reality. The tableaux vivants come about in this transformation to create a living narration of the still landscape into a choreographed gesture in real time.

In this collection, Rina Sherman explores her love for landscape in a collection of urban and rural cine-poems. In the river of Heraclite's river, the water is never the same. So, here too, the movement of these landscapes are pronlonged to the infinite.

Dans cette collection, Rina Sherman explore son amour pour le paysage dans une collection de ciné-poèmes urbains et ruraux. Dans la rivière de Heraclite, l'eau n'est jamais la même. Ainsi, ici également, le mouvement de ces paysages est prolongé à l'infini.