"I have always had a love-hate relationship with cinema, more hate than love. I am opposed to the totalitarian character of the image, which can only serve as a foreground, while our eyes are made to look further. The project of all my work is, using sensory residues, to form an alliance with my enemy, the image, and to find that which would never be able to survive in the foreground. I have always healed wounded images."
Known for his work as a videographer, David Claerbout revisits and undermines the narrative structures of cinema to question the power of the image. He also draws daily, producing many proficient naturalistic drawings from observation in black ink wash, which he often annotates with comments on the image. Duration may be the backbone of the Belgian artist's work, but it is not its sole purpose. Trained in painting and lithography, he is part of the continuity of a history of painting driven as much by its theoretical developments as its techonogical advances, from the invention of the Trained in painting and lithography, he is in the continuity of a history of painting driven as much by its theoretical evolutions as by the successive technological contributions from which it has benefited, from the invention of the optical lens to the digital revolution.