This exhibition of work by artists Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci receives its UK premier at Site Gallery, comprising a series of actions performed by Cool in the larger gallery and video works projected in the smaller gallery.
The exhibition enables Cool and Balducci to work for an extended period of time in the gallery space, exploring the relationships formed between the live actions in one space and the mediated performances on video in the other.
The videos show Cool performing actions, some of which she regularly performs in her live work; others are completed, or continued by Cool in live performance, but this live work is not filmed and the filmed action is not included as part of the live performance; the remaining videos show actions which are never performed live and exist therefore only in video format.
In this manner, Cool and Balducci foreground the passage from one form of physical existence or matter (the video) to another (Cool herself). As such, their work reconstructs time and reveals the participation of the spectator as only one moment in the space-time of the work. The exhibition continues even when there are no spectators; the actions continue when there is no one there; things exist independently of external interaction.
Marie Cool will be present in the gallery throughout the exhibition – Wednesday to Saturday between 11.30 and 5.00 pm. Visitors are invited to enter the gallery and watch the actions taking place at any time.
Marie Cool & Fabio Balducci (French, b 1961 & Italian, b 1964) live and work in Paris. They have been working together since 1995. They presented their performances in public for the first time in 2000 and have since given them notably at the South London Gallery, the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris,the Centre National de la Danse, Paris, the Festival of Avignon and the Performa Festival at PS1 in New York. Solo exhibitions include Catherine Bastide Gallery, Brussels, Attitudes, Geneva and MUDAM, Museum of Modern Art, Luxembourg.