Florian Zeyfang / Slow Narration Moving Still

An extensive engagement with experimental film and video characterizes the work of German artist Florian Zeyfang. His installations and filmic works have been shown in exhibitions and at film festivals internationally. Slow Narration Moving Still, Zeyfang’s solo exhibition at Bildmuseet, is the first large-scale presentation of his art to a Swedish audience.

The exhibition Slow Narration Moving Still includes a selection of Florian Zeyfang’s most recent works as well as a new piece produced for Bildmuseet. In his artistic practice, Zeyfang has addressed transformations in technologies and media in relation to art and society. Fascinated both by formal approaches and the content of art during periods of political change, his works revolve around the consequential influences on cultural expression in relation to social development.

Slow Narration Moving Still investigates the relation between movement and narration, with a particular focus on the still-image-becoming-film. The slide installations and video works included in the show develop along the lines of the experiment in visual language. The video Introduction to a Small History of Photography explores the use of photographs as printed reproductions from the books that Walter Benjamin had at hand when writing his classical essay in 1931. Reference to film history is made in the slide show Obscurity, where the flow of black and white photographs is interrupted by text fragments, addressing questions on what is a government and who gives the authority to govern.

This interest in the experiment in relation to moving images is further explored through the other works in the show. Zeyfang’s new work Horizon, conceived for the exhibition, is based on his research in the collections of Västerbottens Museum. Consisting of a projection, a wall construction, and a painting, Horizon scans the landscape of home and work-related migration. Its architecture forms the background for the exhibition Slow Narration Moving Still.

Events

A series of lectures has been planned in relation to themes addressed by the exhibition, including the following speakers: Eric de Bruyn, Anselm Franke, Marc Glöde, Carles Guerra, Tabea Metzel and Stefanie Schulte-Strathaus. The series is collaboration between Umeå School of Fine Arts and Bildmuseet.