tacita dean: film at the tate modern

tacita dean: film at the tate modern‘film’ by tacita dean images by lucy dawkins; courtesy tacita dean, frith street gallery, london and marian goodman gallery, new york/paris.

tacita dean: film tate modern, london, UK 
now until march 11, 2012

the tate modern presents the installation ‘film’ by england-born and berlin-based filmmaker tacita dean. part of the unilever series an annual artistic commission which invites an artist to fill the museum’s turbine hall– ‘film’ is the twelfth

installation of its kind and the first film project in the history of the unilever series.

the piece is an 11-minute, silent, 35 millimeter film projected at a height of 13 meters in a darkened end of the exhibition space. dean shoots and manipulates exclusively by means of analogue film, rather than employing a digital medium at any point throughout her process. in this way, she is the architect, organizing her work by hand as she overlays sketches and paint; cuts and photographs the raw material; and ultimately alters the sound and vision of her art in a process that is highly sculptural. dean’s tinting and cut-film techniques help to create her surrealistic installation; each frame of film altered entirely by hand. the piece features black, white and colorful images of both man-made and natural surroundings, flickering brightly in the darkened turbine hall. ‘film’ is celebration and exposure of dean’s artistic ideals in addition to the malleable quality of the medium itself.

the work, consisting of cut film features a varied combination of both natural and manufacturedshapes and color

wide view of the installation space

‘film’ consists of dean’s precise incorporation of simplistic representations of the every day in a fantastical color palette

video footage of the ‘tacita dean: film. the unilever series, tate modern, london’ installation after its implementation video © vernissage