Tacita Dean talks about her exhibition at Mudam

⁣Since the early 1990s, Tacita Dean (b. 1965, Canterbury) has developed a singular body of work using multiple mediums, like film, photography and sound; drawing, printmaking and collage. Encompassing a diverse array of subjects, her work is characterised by a careful observation of time, a keen attention to history and a love of the fine details in life. Dean also welcomes chance as one of her guiding principles. A great believer in the non-deliberate act, Dean sometimes allows contingency, circumstance and accident to dictate the final outcome of a work. Since 2011, the artist’s work has also had to deal with digital imaging eclipsing photochemical film and photography, a topic she has written and spoken about at length describing an exponential accumulation of images: ‘A world that does not forget is a world that is drowning in its inability to forget.’ The East Gallery brings together the original artworks used in the stage sets for the ballet The Dante Project,
which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in October 2021. Dean
designed the sets and costumes for a ballet choreographed by Wayne McGregor (b.
1970, Stockport) with an original score by the composer Thomas Adès (b. 1971,
London). The Dante Project is based on Dante Alighieri’s (b. 1265, Florence –
d. 1321, Ravenna) The Divine Comedy and staged in three parts, representing
Dante’s journey through the realms of the dead – Inferno, Purgatorio and
Paradiso. Using three distinct mediums – drawing, photography and film – for
each act, Dean’s set design moves from negative to positive, monochrome to
colour and from representation to abstraction, plotting Dante’s passage through
the underworld. Inferno (2019) is the largest blackboard drawing Dean has made
to date and depicts an inverted frozen mountain landscape in negative. Taking
inspiration from the cold environment described by Dante, Dean conceived a
versatile netherworld where the souls dance beneath a low ceiling. Above them,
a small mirrored ellipse rights the inverted mountains revealing a glimmer of
the normal world, unattainable to the damned. Purgatory (Threshold) (2020) is a
large-scale photograph pinned to the wall, laboriously overlaid with white
pencil. Just as Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’ is an intermediary state, Dean explored
the idea of making an image somewhere between negative and positive.
Photographed using an 8 x 10 analogue camera, Jacaranda trees – with foliage
that turns completely purple in the spring – are depicted in prints that
reverse the negative to a positive, turning the distinctive violet flowers into
an other-worldly green. The white pencil veiling the surrounding urban
landscape accentuates the strangeness of the image. In the centre of the
gallery is a pavilion housing the 35mm film Paradise (2021), the final work of
the trilogy. It is the first time that Paradise is being shown as an artwork
outside of its staging in the ballet. The soundtrack is a digital simulation of
Thomas Adès’s orchestrated score Paradiso. Known technically as a MIDI, the
computer simulation became an invaluable tool while the orchestra were unable
to record the music during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Paradise was filmed in the
extended format Cinemascope and is entirely abstract, drawing on the circular
and planetary motifs present in Dante’s ‘Paradiso’. The film’s rich colours
were taken from the palette of William Blake (b. 1757 – d. 1827, London) and
can also be seen in the ten hand-printed silkscreen prints representing the
planetary states in the corridor. Other works associated with The Dante Project
are also on show, including two artworks from the Purgatory series entitled
Purgatory (Mounts I & II), 2021 and an eight-part photogravure entitled
Inferno, 2021, made from a panorama of vintage photographs showing mountains
with collage and notation to depict Dante & Virgil’s journey. A small chalk
drawing, Expulsion (2019), after Masaccio’s (b. 1401, San Giovanni Altura – d.
1428, Rome) fresco in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence, depicts Adam and Eve’s
expulsion from Eden. Commissioned by the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, the
drawing was made in response to Britain’s exit from the European Union. The
second half of the exhibition is formed around Tacita Dean’s 16mm film One
Hundred and Fifty Years of Painting (2021) shown in a specially designed pavilion
that also includes two paintings by the artists featured in the film: Luchita
Hurtado (b. 1920, Caracas – d. 2020, Santa Monica) and Julie Mehretu (b. 1970,
Addis Ababa). Media partner: Monopol





Tacita Dean talks about her exhibition at Mudam (EN – Subtitles: EN/FR)
⁣Copyright ⓒ Mudam Luxembourg Museum
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Thumbnail Photo Copyright Tacita Dean, VSA Digital Design.
All artworks shown in this video is under Copyright Tacita Dean or Representative Agent/Gallery
Music License: Published under Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse
allowed)