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  Sophie WhettnallRoad Stretch &
Scènes d'Attente / Scenes of Waiting
  Belgium 2000
installations
 
Last year Sophie Whettnall was the youngest laureate for the Prize of Belgian Painting 1999 in the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels. Contrary to what the name of the prize suggests, paintings were in the minority. Video and photography were the main entrants in the exhibition. In general Whettnall's work is primarily autobiographical. Any of her own experiences or of her own observations from the sidelines can become a subject for her work. This exhibition, judged outstanding by the jury, showed her video triptych 'Scènes d'attente'. On three huge screens we see only an audience waiting for a performance in a concert hall or opera house; a performance that does not, however, take place. We hear several minutes of buzzing voices and then a thunderous applause. Now and again we see spotlight squares, which put even more emphasis on the audience. 'Road Stretch', another work by Whettnall from 1999, is a diptych installation. This work is built up in a game using perspective and vanishing points to go beyond the given framework of reality and open the horizon of a physical space to an infinite field of space and perception. 'Road Stretch' also has an autobiographical tint: everyday life and the roads we come across. We see a diptych of two different roads and/or landscapes filmed from a car window (right side). On the one side a rocky, limestone landscape with posts along the road emitting a rhythmic image. On the other side a grass landscape with a blue, static crash barrier along the road that glides through the image as a constant. Whettnall finds her inspiration in incidents and situations that she herself observes. Interestingly enough she has not yet referred to media art or media in general in her work.

– Erwin Nyboer
Sophie Whettnall, 1973, Brussels (Belgium)
Lives and works in Brussel (Belgium)

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