The film 180° features a pianist performing a sonata by the Belgian composer Guillaume Lekeu (1870–94) in an empty concert hall with subdued lighting. The movement of the camera reveals, after a time, that the musician and his instrument are in fact upside down, suspended in space. This unusual mise en scène is the result of research that the artist began in 2010 for a corpus of artworks titled Lost in Time (2009–), and, more particularly, through the continuing sound-exploration series Piano Orbital, which draws us to works by Bach, Debussy, Lekeu, and Ravel. This series of piano-related experiments is based on the retranscription of the notes of a composition, flipped to different degrees (90°, 120°, and 270°) and transposed into new staffs. Piano Orbital no1 is based on the performance of the fourth movement of Lekeu’s Sonate pour piano seul. Although it is meticulously retranscribed to retain a horizontal reading, the score and its basic harmonic structure are disrupted. Bernatchez has chosen to develop this concept and deepen his analysis of rereading at 180° for the film. He therefore puts this experimental process into images and strengthens it through camera movements such as changes of point of view and revolutions around the protagonist. Thus, over a slightly dissonant sound track, the film offers a strangely poetic and vertiginous atmosphere.
Artistic Approach
Patrick Bernatchez is a multidisciplinary artist who has integrated drawing, painting, video, photography, installation, music, and sound into his work over the years. He is particularly interested in notions of time and of death, subjects that he addresses and develops in long-term projects. His two most recent major corpuses, Chrysalides (2008–10) and Lost in Time (2009–), offer different reflections on social organization and on time. In the latter series, the artist observes, more specifically and by different angles, the various dimensions of time – space-time, cosmic time, performative time, time travel, and temporal distortion. These large-scale projects have enjoyed international recognition on the contemporary art scene.
Biography
Patrick Bernatchez
Born in 1972, Patrick Bernatchez is a multidisciplinary artist. He has had works in exhibitions at West Gallery, The Hague, the Netherlands; Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing, France; Mass MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, United States; and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Québec City, Canada. In September 2014, he had a major exhibition at the Casino Luxembourg in collaboration with the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, which hosted the exhibition in the fall of 2015. Fragments of this exhibition project, titled Les temps inachevés, will also be presented at Centre Argos, Brussels, Belgium, and at The Power Plant, Toronto, Ontario. Bernatchez lives and works in Montreal.