Art
Langlands & Bell exhibition, London
Art
Masters in the field of multidisciplinary media, British artists Langlands & Bell's varied portfolio has fascinated and surprised us at every turn. And last night at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, they unveiled their latest work, the digital animation ‘A Muse Um’, which subscribers to Wallpaper* will recognise from the limited edition cover of W* 093, designed by Langlands & Bell.
Taking the built environment and the way in which space is delineated along socio and geopolitical lines as their starting point, the pair animates seemingly superfluous details of everyday life in such a way as to imbue them with a greater significance – a reflection on globalisation and our mindset. Since the early 1990s they’ve frequently used acronyms of a wide range of organisations, from terrorist groups to NGOs, internet domains to international airport codes, turning them with visual juxtaposition and repetition into a form of concrete poetry.
What we love about their work is that, despite the fact their concepts are rooted in the potentially weighty arena of political, social and cultural commentary, there’s nothing didactic or highfalutin; quite the opposite, the simplicity of their work is often what makes it so powerful.
‘A Muse Um’ illustrates this balance perfectly. The animation pitches acronyms of museums from around the world (MoMA, ICA, SMK and so on) with photographs of the museum signs in situ, the grounds, facades and interior shots also in successive rotation. Despite the buildings spanning the globe and several architectural styles, the relentless and increasingly hypnotic cycle of images leaves one feeling that each museum is in fact devoid of any individual identity and as corporate or soulless in its homogeneity as any other building.
As well as ‘A Muse Um’, the Whitechapel Gallery is showing several more works from Langlands & Bell’s portfolio, including their Bafta prize-winning ‘The House of Osama bin Laden’ trilogy from 2003.
INFORMATION
Related article
The Whitechapel Project, London
- Event dates
- 31 October 2007 to 7 December 2007
- Website
- http://www.whitechapel.org
