Installation view of The Montafon Letter, 2017; When first I raised the tempest, 2016; and Sunset, 2015. Chalk on blackboard. Dimensions variable. © Tacita Dean. Photo: Ron Amstutz. Courtesy: the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris.
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Multi-Layered Narratives TACITA DEAN In a 2018 interview with Royal Academy, Tacita Dean (b. setting and the murkiness of photographic negatives. The “The process of erasure 1965) stated that she “didn’t care about the long run, caring process of erasure and punctuation innate to the medium and punctuation only about now.” Dean is a British European artist born in are in dialogue with the scene and the indecipherable text innate to the medium Canterbury, currently living and working between Berlin and peeking through the many layers of chalk. There is also a are in dialogue with Los Angeles (where she was the Artist in Residence at the performative element at play: the artist adjusts the works with the scene and the indecipherable text Getty Research Institute from 2014 to 2015). She is perhaps each installation, changing words and modifying shading.” Dean began working on Sunset (2015) after moving to Los peeking through one of the best-known female artists of her time – a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, winner of the Hugo Boss Prize Angeles in 2014. Shrouded in thick cloud, the sunset manag- the many layers in 2006, and a Royal Academy of Arts electee – exploring a es to be both still and moving – impending darkness looms. of chalk. There sense of history, time and place, as well as the quality of light The motif is inspired by the California sky and recalls the is a performative work of Romantic-era British landscape painter John Consta- element at play.” and the tangible essence of analogue film reels. Dean works across 16mm film, photogravure, sound in- ble. When first I raised the tempest (2016) takes its title from stallation, gouache, artist books and found objects, with an Act Five in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which Prospero reimpressive portfolio that transcends categorisation by genre, sponds to the spirit Ariel: "I did say so, when first I raised the medium or interpretation. Glenstone Museum, Maryland, tempest. Say, my spirit, how fares the king and ’s followers?" Lightning strikes through the dark, ominous clouds; their opens an installation comprising three monumental chalkboard works – Sunset (2015), When first I raised the tempest forms conjure the supernatural storm and subsequent (2016) and The Montafon Letter (2017). Affixed to the pre-cast shipwreck at the heart of the play. Spanning 32 feet, the work concrete walls of the pavilion, these large-scale, multi-panel is Dean’s widest blackboard drawing to date. The title of The chalk-on-blackboard drawings create a panoramic effect as Montafon Letter (2017) alludes to a series of 17th century visitors descend into the gallery space. avalanches in the mountainous Montafon valley of Austria, Glenstone Museum, Glenstone comments: “These drawings operate between the from which one priest miraculously survived. Maryland didactic and the sublime, depicting – amongst other things The scale of these works, alongside their allusions to both Opens 6 May – the sea, sky, ships and rocks. Executed on Victorian-era tangible and images landscapes, places the viewer at the chalkboards, the works manage to evoke both a classroom centre of a dramatic and multi-layered historical narrative. glenstone.org
14 Aesthetica
