Out and About - Bob Demper

What have you been up to in the last year?
“The first few months of Covid were a very adaptive period. For the last 3 years I’ve been working on a film, partly to be shot in my studio and partly on location in America. The travel limitations forced me to have to rethink some of my immediate plans, but I think these restrictions always open up doors to become more creative. While this pandemic has been a time of confinement, I have at the same time experienced more freedom than ever. It has allowed me to work with less distractions, more routine and lots of time to experiment.

With art institutions having to look for different ways to reach their audience; Marnix van Uum and I started making videos for multiple art organizations in The Hague. Through this we’ve been able to continue to be exposed to art during lockdown and meet a lot of great people!”

What are we seeing on the grass?
“On the grass stands the façade of an apartment building. Here lives the protagonist of the film I’m working on: 5000 miles. His window is supposed to overlook a quintessential, grimy alley in Manhattan. It was only much later that I discovered that the image of such an alley comes purely from Hollywood’s take on the city: only a handful actually exist and due to privatization even fewer are accessible. In that sense it’s a purely fictional space that only exists in the collective consciousness. While working on this set piece (that was realized for one specific shot in the film) I started gradually seeing it more as a spatial installation. When seen framed and from just the right angle it upholds the proposed reality, but as soon as you take a step back it’s gone and it becomes something completely different. My interest in this fragility -that is very specific to the medium cinema, often leads me to make paintings, sculptures and installations that are simultaneously adjacent as well as structural parts of the story. After this exhibition I will relocate the wall to another outdoor space and wait for a pigeon to land on the chimney pipe to get the perfect shot.”