Image:
Stefano Cagol,
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LIES
SOLO SHOW Platform 04 February - 12 March 2005 Essay by Mami Kataoka PRIVATE
VIEW: 4 February, 2005
This exhibition is the first step of a public art project about the symbol of the flag, which will run through other cities with the collaboration of international art spaces in Tokyo and New York, and of the Civic Gallery of Contemporary Art in Trento, Italy, where the first version of the video was showed for the group show New Italian Space. “The continuous aesthetic mutability of a flag - in this case the American one - moved by the wind make me think about the changeability, the insecurity of ideals, of promises, of truth that all seem wrong, that all seem Lies. It makes me think how harshly a man can fight and die for the simple name of one flag. At this moment, I think in particular about the States, they try by any means to convince the world that their projects of war are only for truth and for peace…” Stefano Cagol Platform is a project space co-ordinated by Sheila Lawson which shows work by artists from aboard and from the UK. Essay by Mami Kataoka Whether something is true or not ? for Stefano Cagol's Lies” (extract ) “…In the new version of the video Stars & Stripes created
for this solo exhibition Lies, there is a greater subtlety in the
movement of the flag, which emphasizes the changing nature and dynamism
of a world that becomes increasingly complex and diverse as it is
affected by significant internal and external events. At intervals of
between ten seconds and five minutes, Stars & Stripes is
interspersed with five seconds of darkness as the image changes in slow
motion. Distorted and linked images of modern society are superimposed
onto the flag as it moves eerily like a jellyfish or a ray, while the
constantly changing image at times resembles a mask worn by a man who
is plotting evil. The Stars and Stripes glimmering in the sunlight as
it flutters against a background of clear blue sky could also be a
symbol of what the Americans call 'justice'. In contrast, as the flag
becomes a shadow against the grey sky, it is also reminiscent of a dark
cloud looming over society. The soundtrack has been recorded in the
streets of New York but as the recording has been adjusted to play at
low-speed, rather than representing the cheers and applause rising from
a festive parade in Manhattan, the soundtrack conveys a sense of
foreboding. At the end of the film, the Stars and Stripes, which
represents both truth and lies, begins to move towards the observer. It
is as though Cagol is asking us to consider how each of us can remain
autonomous and continue to raise the 'flag of imagination' in this
world which we are all part of, a world in which truth and lies
continually change and in which good and evil have many faces…” In 2001 she co-curated My Home is Yours / Your Home is Mine with Hou Hanru and Jerome Sans. In 2002 she worked with the Barbican Art Gallery in London to produce JAM: Tokyo-London. In the same year she was one of nine curators to develop the exhibition Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art. She was also the selector, with Hou Hanru, of the Asian galleries that participated in the 2004 ARCO held in Madrid. More recently she has worked on projects with artists: Rirkrit Tiravanija, Santiago Cucullu, Ozawa Tsuyoshi and Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba.
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