Silent Ocean

Conceptual beach triptych: Manfred Neuwirth's fascinating video installation ‘The Sea Only Talks about the Sea’ in the Wiener Medienwerkstatt.

Many of the media artist Manfred Neuwirth's precisely composed moving image works have been situated at the intersection of cinema and museum space, of documentarism and structuralism. His latest work, ‘The Sea Only Talkes about the Sea’, works equally well as a film, the premiere of which is still pending, and as a three-channel installation. A kind of world premiere is currently taking place at the Wiener Medienwerkstatt: a new 68-minute Neuwirth production (flanked by four smaller video works) about the play of the ocean (the sky, the sand, the light), shot with a view of the beach at Arrifana in southern Portugal. Three images are placed next to each other, each showing a fragile relationship that the viewer must decipher. Despite its apparent minimalism, Neuwirth's study of the ocean is not meditative; instead, it quietly activates the senses. The work, with its subtle musical accompaniment by Christian Fennesz, reconciles painting, technology, and geometry.

Stefan Grissemann, profil