Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation

Jana Sterbak - Through the Eye of the Other

“Arte Contemporanea a Teatro”, a joint venture involving the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation and the La Fenice Opera House in Venice, curated by Francesca Pasini, continues with a project by the Canadian artist of Czech origin, Jana Sterbak (Prague 1955), “Through the Eye of the Other”, including the screening of the video Waiting For High Water projected onto the fire screen, and the display of a sculpture by the artist.

On 27th February from 7pm to 9pm the La Fenice Opera House will be open to the public for the inauguration; the video will then be screened from 12th to 24th March in the hour prior to the start of the Opera Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, directed by Saburo Teschigawara.

After the 2003 Biennale, in which she was entrusted with the Canada Pavilion, Jana Sterbak now makes a double return to Venice: the screening of Waiting For High Water (2005) is in fact dedicated to the city in the moment in which the tide in rising. It is the second of a series of videos on multiple screens, which form part of the “composition” put together using Stanley the dog, onto whose body a video camera was affixed. The first, From Here to There, shot in the winter of 2002-2003 in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, was featured at the Canada Pavilion in 2003, while Waiting For High Water, shot in 2004, was presented for the first time at the Prague Biennial in 2005.
When Jana Sterbak accepted the invitation to screen Waiting For High Water onto the fire screen of the La Fenice Opera House, she also created a counterpoint in another area of the theatre in which to display a silver sculpture of the dog, entitling the entire event Through the Eye of the Other. Waiting For High Water started life as a triple projection, but at the La Fenice Opera House it is shown on a single screen – the fire screen – yet the variety of viewpoints is maintained through its linking up to the dog sculpture.
The great work that Jana Sterbak produced from the end of the ‘70s was characterised by a particular relationship between performance, projection and photography.

At the basis of her performances there are a number of object-sculptures serving as the fulcrum around which the ensuing images are developed. The most famous are Vanitas 1987 and Chair Apollinaire (1996), the dress and the armchair created using raw beef: a symbol of both Eros and death. In Sisyhpe (1991), a naked man inside a great cage with a semi-spherical floor tries to move around, but the curved surface prevents him from maintaining a direction: a metaphor of the great human effort and difficulties of a hypothetical contemporary hero who, although fully capable of crossing the planet, is held back by his own inner state, to which the cage refers. In Remote Control I (1989), presented at the Aperto- Biennale in Venice in 1990), a woman is hanging from the waist down inside a cage on wheels, moved around by a remote control. Once again we find a symbol of the difficulty in acting freely, of exercising one’s own physical or political movement instead of being subjected to it. Sterbak lived in Prague until adolescence before moving to Canada together with her family, and in her works we come up against both her cutting and ironic criticisms of the influence of capitalism on human perception and cognisance, as well as the profound influence of her own personal history. Faradayurt (2001), is a closed tent made of metallised fabric, protected by a magnetic field (discovered by Michael Faraday) reminiscent both of the Nomad tent of Central Asia (yurt) and of that painted by Piero Della Francesca in The Dream of Constantine (1457). It is an enigmatic mental space, both protective and isolating. The fabric is opaque from the outside while transparent from the inside, yet one may only gaze out from within, which creates an invisible isolation reflecting the status of the soul, and the one sometimes imposed by the outside world. Emblematic of this is the work of 2001 Dissolution (Auditorium), in which a series of chairs laid out in an irregular circle – as if they were characters in an auditorium – slowly go to pieces: the seat and the backrest are made of ice, and as they melt the chairs fall apart, leaving the legs scattered on the floor.

Sterbak does not set her performances in a theatrical context but in a conceptual dialectic which maintains an equilibrium between movement, narration and the very identification of the imagery. When, in Through the Eye of the Other , the video and sculpture are brought to share a theatre space, they highlight the essence of the theatrical composition which (scenic, narrative and musical involvement aside) comes to life “through the eye of the other”, as stated in the Jana Sterbak’s project title . Seeing or being seen “through the eye of the other” does not lead to a static, mirrored reaction, but rather to the interaction with the other. The dog with the camera tied his body is the fulcrum of the performance from which Sterbak created her video, yet it’s also an autonomous sculpture, observing metaphorically what’s going on around it. Or, placed inside an opera house, “a solo” of some sort rhythmically pouring forth from the space. Special thanks to Raffaella Cortese Gallery – Milan. Our thanks to Toni Tapies Gallery – Barcelona, Barbara Gross Gallery – Münich, Delegation of Québec of Rome, Epson.

Biography

Jana Sterbak was born in Prague in 1955; she lives and works in Montréal. She has held solo exhibitions in private galleries and museum spaces throughout the world, including: the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec; MUDAC Lausanne, Switzerland; Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena; Historisches und Volkerkundemuseum, St Gallen, Switzerland; MAN, Nuoro; Artium, Vitoria, Spain; Palais de Beaux arts, Bruxelles; Centre Cuturel Canadien, Paris Carré d’art, Nimes, France, the Venice Biennale, Malmö Konsthall, Mälmo; Haus der Kunst, München; Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Musée d'art moderne de Saint-Etienne; Fundació Antoni Tapies, Barcelona; Serpentine Gallery, London; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal; Louisiana, Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Fundació “La Caixa”, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. She has taken part in a range of important international events, including Aperto at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Her works are to be found in the collections of a number of museums, including the Museion in Bolzano (“From Here to There”, 2003) and the Maxxi in Rome (“Faradayurt”, 2001).

As well as her solo show at the La Fenice Opera House in Venice, this year the artist is also present in the following events: Elles, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 27 May 2009 – 24 March 2010 Emporte-moi, MAC VAL, Val de Marne, 29 April – 5 September 2010 (catalogue) EATING THE UNIVERSE, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 28 November 2009 – 28 February 2010 (catalogue) | Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria, 24 March – 4 June 2010 | Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart, Germany, 18 September 2010 - 9 January 2011 Difference on Display, Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam, 11 December 2009 – 7 March 2010 JEUX DES ROLES, Garenne Lemot et Beaux arts de Nantes, 8 July – 31 October 2010 Enea Righi collection, Museion in Bolzano, 20 March - 19 September 2010 L’Éclatement des frontières (1965-2000), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, 16 June - 10 October 2010

Press Office

Studio Pesci Ph. +39 051 269267 – Fax +39 051 2960748 HYPERLINK www.studiopesci.it
info@studiopesci.it