galeria cadaqués has opened the first exhibition in a private gallery of the artist and filmmaker albert serra. entitled roi soleil, is a single-screen video installation of a sixty-one-minute work.
the work, which is shown twice a day (at 19:30 and 20:30), is based on the images that the artist shot in a performance commissioned by the graça brandao gallery in lisbon at the beginning of the year. Taking up the original idea of the film The Death of Louis XIV, which was originally intended to be a performance at the Pompidou Museum in Paris, the artist asked his favourite actor Luis Serrat to stage the slow agony of the French monarch for seven days, until his final death, in front of the visitors to the gallery, in a physical and psychological challenge of considerable complexity. this performance was recorded in its entirety (about twenty-two nine hours) and now albert serra has created a piece with this material.
the audiovisual piece, however, transcends this documentary origin and becomes a fascinating reflection on the instability of visual meaning in the actor’s face, and the profound mystery that shrouds all genuine representation. the three essential dimensions of this dying body, the person, the actor – the vain person who knows he is filmed – and the character, interpellate and confuse each other with sensuality and innocence, creating a difficult work, narrative and conceptual at the same time, a document of a real performance but recreated with the time, fantasy and illusion of a cinematographic work.
albert serra (banyoles, 1975). is the most original, controversial and renowned Catalan film director on the international cultural and artistic scene. he has participated in the venice biennale, the documenta in kassel and his films have been shown in the most important museums in the world: from the moma, the pompidou and the tate to the MNCARS and the MACBA.
