Vanitas – Plastic Surgery, 2007
Video
05'05" loop
I arranged a composition reminiscent of a 17th century vanitas still life from the Low Countries; an assortment of fruits is visible on the corner of a table covered in a tablecloth; they are accompanied by a glass of wine and a sandtimer. The fruits gradually transform – almost invisibly, to a slow pulsing rhythm – as the edges of the transplants turn brown and are replaced; in the meantime the sandtimer remains motionless. While Dutch still lifes used various symbolic objects such as sandtimers, skulls, wine, and fruit to draw attention to the unavoidable passing of time, I attempted an impossible experiment, and tried to freeze time by removing the signs of inevitable decay and transience, and replacing them with new parts. When composing the work and selecting the speed of the animation, I attempted to make the dialogue with antecedents from the genre of painting as obvious as possible. For this same reason I put the monitor (with its card reader) into a classical style picture frame, so that the exhibited work would emphasize the same dialogue with the genre of painting.