PUJAN SHAKUPA | 2 MEN, 1 WOMAN, 0 WOMAN

Opening: Friday, 09.06.2017, 7 pm
Exhibition: 10.06.–01.07.2017

2 MEN, 1 WOMAN, 0 WOMAN is an attempt to represent the  temps mort, "those moments in which everything seems to be over and everything appears to have been  said already".

Through seemingly banal and unimportant actions, the protagonists – overtly confused and disoriented, but at the same time principled and genuinely upright – symbolize the intimate emptiness and stillness of the modern individual. This internal void creates a longing, a nostalgia for something that is lost, something that used to be there but cannot be found. The characters’ suffering is not rooted in the absence of others, but rather in a defective relationship to their own emotional lives: a longing for desire!

The vaguely oneiric sequences result from an accumulation of scenes in which the characters unsuccessfully try to escape their desperate situation. By observing themselves and their surroundings, they become their own spectators. Their presence inhabits the vast emptiness of the rooms and landscapes in which they find themselves, while they engage in constant self-scrutiny.

This condition is emphasized through a formal and aesthetic device: a triptychal installation whereby the film scenes run on three slightly offset and separate screens. The protagonists, their portrayals and their worlds are juxtaposed, thus diverting the viewer's attention away from the "content" of the story and directing it toward the "context", the order of the scenes.