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Roos Theuws
Year Title  
2007 Art Fair presentation "Hazard Rate"
2006 Hazard Rate
 
 
In this solo exhibition at RAM, Roos Theuws will show large-format photos and four video works. HAZARD RATE 1 & 2, GAUSSIAN BLUR and THE HORSE SMITH Each photograph is an extreme enlargement of a small piece of mineral stone. This enlargement brings the viewer into a physical relationship with the work. By doing so, new affinities and associations are created. The photographs evoke images of imaginary landscapes such as the arctic sea or an earth-landscape as seen from a satellite. The video works HAZARD RATE I & II consist of extremely fast image-changes. The viewer sees flashes of video-images that derive their meaning from the images they trigger in the viewer's psyche, this in turn appeals to the realm of the subconscious. The fragmentation caused by this metheod can also be alarming, it is as if our usual method of observation simply explodes.
By arranging and edtiing the images, which come from completey different sources, one can no longer speak of a trusted, conventional, linear, narrative structure. The individual images generate a string of rapidly changing associations in the viewer's memory. In the video work 'GAUSSIAN BLUR' a pastoral scene of children and horses can be seen together with swaying trees recorded during a violent storm. By super-imposing these images another kind of simultaneity is created, different than that of 'HAZARD RATE' but dissolving the narrative structure as well.
In 'GAUSSIAN BLUR', one experiences a kind of lingering timelessness that appeals to the subconscious as well, but in a different manner. In the initial phase of the piece, the images form a painterly ambiance giving one the idea of impressionistic paintings.Then, with the onslaught of the storm, this pastoral image is threatened, creating a feeling of impending doom.
Two actualities taking place at the same moment; the imaging that has been created is a tangible result of 'assembling', a transparent technique of mixing and editing. The uncertainty about that which cannot be named, creates space for a more redefined observation.
THE HORSE SMITH is a two monitor installation: once again the viewer is confronted with a heavily edited piece. The images stem originally from filming a horse smith in the mediterranean light combined with lilac colored rhodedenrons. The light experience is nearly tactile, merging the visual with the tactile the piece ends in a simultaneity of the two images.
We are perhaps more influenced by image fragments that roam in our subconscious, than through our conscious actions which permit us to make connections between thinking and acting.
 
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