| |
The Clearing/Liquidation: Ukraine
[2005]
Gersht often mediates between still photography and moving image,
in The Clearing he combines the two establishing dialogue between
a film (The Forest) and photographs (Liquidation). In The Forest
commission by the Film and Video Umbrella there are again the
historical links that he explores in all his previous work and
the compelling materiality of his chosen medium, this time adding
sound to his image. The disruptive crash of felled trees, which
breaks the silence of a forest idyll, is a loud fissure in the
contemplative image; it propels the viewer and makes them jump.
It is this very ‘jolting’ in the mediation between
past and present - the art historical references of Casper David
Friedrich’s painting and their romantic silence transposed
to the forest of the Ukraine ‘ that was chewed up by war
and fertilized by the bones and blood of the unnumbered dead’
that ‘breaks’ the silence.
At a time when many film and video artists dealing with the
political are producing work that has more in common with the
medium of documentary Gersht’s work explores a genre where
he is in the forefront – that of a provocative meditation.
His through consistency is also evident in his Liquidation series,
which grapples with the beauty of the landscapes around the
towns of Kolomyia and Kosov and the darker horrors of the past.
|
The Forest
|
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
Liquidation
|
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
