Press Release
ERIK WESSELO
20 HORSEMEN
24.10 – 21.11.2015
In the Bakery, Annet Gelink Gallery proudly presents 20 Horsemen (2014) a relatively new work by video-artist and photographer Erik Wesselo, shot in a savanna.
During the late 1990s the artist returned to one of the oldest themes in art: the landscape. Since then, nature and repetition are the most reappearing elements in both his films and his photography. Wesselo often chooses a melancholic atmosphere that is expressed through images saturated with gloomy colors and soft contours.
20 Horsemen was filmed in Lesotho, an African country fully landlocked by South Africa. Here, once again, the landscape plays an important role. At first, there is only an empty savanna surrounded by mountains, then we hear the wind blow with a soft rumble in the distance and a group of twenty horsemen emerge on the horizon and approach thunderously at full gallop. The viewer, along with the cameraman, finds themself in the middle of the full-speed action: just before a possible collision the camera turns 180 degrees and the horses ride on, disappearing into the horizon, leaving the viewer once again in an endless landscape. The piece is shown in a loop.
This video depicts the inseparable relationship between man and nature, as well as the fragility of human kind. As the horsemen approach us over and over, the viewer wonders each time whether this will be the time that the horses will finally crash into them. This construction of repetition and the fabrication of time in Wesselo’s art evoke a feeling of the tension created by possible events. There is always a sense of possibility, created through this process of repetition.
For Wesselo, time becomes the thread that is interwoven throughout the entire work, within which a notion of temporality is created by the event itself. Temporality is present in every aspect of human life, and that awareness paired with the experience of time in a theatrical setting is at the core of his artistic practice.
Erik Wesselo (1964, ’s-Hertogenbosch, NL) graduated from de Ateliers in Arnhem in 1995. Since 2014 he lives and works in New York. Wesselo recently had solo exhibitions at the Nederlands Fotomuseum (2011) and this year at Club Solo in Breda, (NL), where his latest film, 20 Horsemen was shown. His work could be viewed in several group exhibitions, including in the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam (2015), and De Hallen, Haarlem (2011). Furthermore, the artist’s work is included in several mayor international collections.