Grey tones loom up ahead. It is not immediately clear what the grey tones and the minimal changes in the grey (aim to) represent. The images are blurred and change slowly. In conjunction with sound the images 'receive' the viewer into a meditative environment, exuding a feeling of peace even though the pace of the image sequencing is increasing slowly. It is an environment in which one can contemplate (inner) visions. Thoughts can be forgotten. Between the black and the white the viewer might detect a shadowy image of an island in the distance. The island briefly appears and disappears, following the flow of the hues. (Ephèmeros (Gr): brief, fleeting). Here, as in earlier video works, Beekman studies the void between seeing and not-seeing; the place where they meet and gradually come together. The artist forces the viewer to watch and while watching to not concentrate on what is being seen. This work is about the whole sensation of the experience of an image and sound totality. It is about looking beyond the image. Sound lends a helping hand here, starting with so-called 'air leaks', the sounds of a bamboo flute which, stripped of their harmonic components, are used to create a new soundscape with a number of virtual instruments. In this landscape one can let the imagination take over, stop paying attention and dream on, dream of that island, far away.
– Marieke van Hal
|
René Beekman ° 1968, Apeldoorn (Netherlands)
Lives and works in Amsterdam (Netherlands)
|
|
1 9 9 9 
