MovimientosAn intervention by Louis von Adelsheim

Swiss-German audiovisual artist, painter, documentarian, and cinematographer Louis von Adelsheim (1953) has worked in video-art since the 1980s, exhibiting in Bern, Cologne, Berlin, and New York, during a period when he was associated with Peter Gabriel and Brice Mac Lean. Peter Weibel, director of the influential ZKM (Karlsruge, Germany) has also shown an interest in von Adelsheim's work. Movimientos/Bewegungen is his first large-scale intervention in a gallery space, and will be presented between April 10^th and June 3^rd at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Quinta Normal Park in Santiago, Chile.

Originally, the project was slated to open in march of 2010 in the same institution. However, the February 27^th earthquake that year delayed it until now. The artist used the time to shoot a documentary about the state in which the two locales of the MA were left, Borrar el terremoto, which helped raise funds in Europe. In 2002 he exhibited there Finito multiplicado, captivating the public.

These gestures have all been an advance peek at the series of 13 video installations with which Adelsheim intervenes every space in the building, built around 1920. The path starts precisely with a new version of that work, presented 10 years ago: two boxes that open doors to a new perception of space, with images that multiply into infinity and a journey through personal and collective memory.

The invitation is transversal: "My work is not exclusive for the art public. In am interested in expanding it with multi-sensorial, interactive works that are able to offer up a different reality," the artist says.

Lit screens, high-tech images, vertigo-inducing motion effects, music, sounds, color, and light, all in darkened spaces or environments that remind us of common locations such as a home's living room, a protective fence, or the interior of a temple. Von Adelsheim's registers are simple and realistic, some have even been captured by chance, during a train trip or walking about a beach. "I manipulate little. I film from nature and am always seeking to maintain the natural feel of what is being filmed," von Adelsheim notes. The projections can be placed against walls, floors, or ceilings; they also emerge from unsuspected corners, like a series of children's eyes that gaze upon visitors from convex screens located on staircases and hallways (Ojos).

There are reiterated plays with mirrors or reflections, multiple, simultaneous images coming from Germany, India, Tibet, and, in particular, Chile. The sensation of infinity and contingent reflections, with an eye towards consumer society, urban chaos, vigilance and control systems, or social movements: as in Ahora, where he invited Chilean artists to portray the recent student mobilization, under the curatorship of Enrique Rivera. Certain images even carry mystical or religious connotations: fish and bread loaves projected in motion in an installation that recreates a conveying belt; fire, water; feet descending forever a coruscating staircase; a monk school in Tibet; the experience of death. The artist also opens up sensorial and critical spaces towards situations of interiority and meditation.