Barbara Seiler

Barbara Seiler is very pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Switzerland of Egyptian artist Dina Danish (* 1981, Paris, F). ‘The Sailor’s Shirt’ is Danish’s latest video work, and investigates elements of time. In the video she is interested in re-investigating the narrative, as well as the time- based medium. She is trying to create time within the tool (the video camera) which functions as a time based medium. The time is created through a specifically folded piece of paper, in which its movement generates moving images. This way, the camera is recording moving images, while the artist’s hand is simultaneously moving images (a piece of paper). In addition to this, the folded paper is representing an image of a paper that is constantly being folded resulting to the change of its forms, and consequently de-constructed and unfolded into a shape that does not resemble the original piece of paper. The voice over is another means of adding a narrative, another time based tool, describing the change of forms and the story of a piece of paper which transforms itself into many different shapes, some recognizable as objects (such as a beak, boat and shirt) and others more recognizable as abstract shapes. By introducing the story of a boat that got hit by a storm and therefore broke, resulting into a shirt, Danish is also interested in the narrator’s voice, which when viewed by an audience, the audience is physically placed where the narrator would have been standing, while narrating the story.

To create a time-based, two-dimensional image was also the intent in the series ‘Stop, Sun ! Continue, Sun !’. Danish folded a piece of light-sensitive, colored paper and exposed it to sun. After a certain time, the sun had bleached the exposed areas of the paper, which resulted in an abstract image once the paper was unfolded. However, due to the exposure to daylight when exhibited, the image will continue to fade and finally disappear. The title ‘Continue, Sun!’ is an instruction to the sun to further bleach the image. The other image of the diptych, ‘Stop, Sun!’ is a re-creation of first image created by the sun. It has been painted in oil and its title is again an instruction to the sun, this time to preserve the image.

Time, direction and space are recurring themes in Danish’s practice, which is strongly influenced by the Greek mythology of Procrustes. Procrustes physically attacked people by stretching them or cutting off their legs, so as to force them to fit the size of an iron bed. The metaphor is used to describe an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced. Jacques Derrida applied this metaphor in ‘The Purveyor of Truth’ (in: The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading) to the structural analysis of texts. Standardization and sameness are put into question. Danish is interested in this question. She re-creates structures and applies them to text, language and shapes. But as Procrustes standardization is a violent act, which ultimately leads to failure, Danish’s work does not attempt to achieve sameness, but shows the failure of it in a critical deconstructionalist way. Her tongue-twister studies address the attempt to win at a tongue twister by writing it down and its eventual failure: in ‘Corrected Tongue Twister’ Danish repeats the tongue twister of Peter Piper, writing it on a piece of paper and marking the mistakes of every attempt to write down the sentence in one word. ‘Stupid Superstition and the Dots and Crosses of Stupid Superstition’ is a sequential arrangement of the words stupid superstition on the first piece of paper and the reduction to only the crosses in the letter t and dots of the letter on a second piece of paper.

‘Color and Music Composition’ creates a narrative based on specific rules applied to the names of colors on color cards. The letters in the names of colors that correspond to the Western music scale are used for the composition (e,f,e,d,h,e in ‘refined white’). Color cards are arranged alphabetically and thematically and the composition read from top left to right. It addresses an attempt to see colors composed in a specific way that they should be read in a time-based manner. However, because of its two- dimensional medium it is usually viewed as a full image. The music composition reinforces it to be read as time-based. It fluctuates between both ways and intends to show colors as music and music as colors.

The lenticular boards positioned in each of the five gallery-rooms refer to the video ‘Counting’, in which Danish is counting with one hand from one to five, using all the different combinations that are possible. Utilizing an anamorphism she is trying to translate the time-based structure of the video into a two-dimensional, time-based medium, the lenticular boards. As each board displays two images and by sequentially linking them, a new, moving image is created, which is another way of re-creating time in a two-dimensional image.

The work of Dina Danish is currently shown at Kunsthall Oslo in the group show ‘Run Comrade, The Old World is Behind You’. She has been selected for the Present Future section at Artissima 18, where she will present a new video with Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam. Starting November 19, 2011, she will be included in ‘il gatto è sul tavolo’, curated by Chris Fitzpatrick at SpazioA Gallery, Pistoia, (I). Earlier this year she exhibited with Jeanine Hofland Contemporary Art, Amsterdam (solo) and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (group).