C.T. Jasper – ERASED

Le Guern Gallery presents C.T. Jasper’s second solo exhibition. ERASED is a unique intervention that challenges the role of the art gallery. Screened from outside stimuli, the empty space of the gallery becomes the site of a two-channel video installation in which Jasper has performed interventions in two cult movies: David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum. All characters have been removed from the footage; the corridors, floors, opening doors, or a table set for dinner become the leading protagonists. The background sounds retained by the artist – thumps, clinks, creaking, rustle – help us to follow the plot. Film space and gallery space become one place, something between an empty cinema, a deserted film location, and a gallery.

Jasper’s art reveals his preoccupation with the role of the filmic image, sci-fi literature, the communist utopias of modernity, and avant-garde art in influencing the collective cultural imagination. Working with an existing potential of images, the artist subjects them to shifts and reconstructions, leading the viewer through a surreal space. Desire, violence, or space exploration assume in his work the form of an intellectually sophisticated textual and bodily experience. To quote a pertinent excerpt from one of his works: The film has been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your limits.