Reflective Encounters

“The art of abstraction requires images to be channelled through multiple media to produce something new and beautiful. The artist and filmmaker Robert Seidel focuses his work on this premise, setting up projections, installations, and cameras to find images which have never before been created, with work appearing across numerous festivals and museums, including the Palais des Beaux-Arts Lille, Art Center Nabi Seoul, ZKM Karlsruhe, and MOCA Taipei. Seidel’s use of film allows him to capture the moving pictures of his set-ups for posterity and push the boundaries of cinema in new and exciting directions.

Hysteresis is based on a simple idea – the LGBTQ+ performer Tsuki performs free-flowing choreography in front of a blank wall onto which footage is projected and blended around them. The movements combine the objective with the human, moving from natural landscapes to stunning paintings to fuse various modes of image-making together into a dynamic mass of colour and light. There’s a sense of euphoria to Seidel’s work, of breaking free from the constraints and binaries of society, conventional artistic style, and even the dimensions of reality. The result is a breath-taking work which can evoke questions and meditations, or simply be allowed to immerse and wash over the viewer.”

— Lillian Crawford