Without Trace

Willie Doherty (Photographer)

Research output: Non-textual formExhibition

Abstract

Exhibition at the Galerie Peter Kilchmann exhibits Willie Dohertyʼs solo show “Without Trace”. Video installation and series of 10 related, framed c-type colour photographs. “Without Trace” is the world premiere of a new body of work by Willie Doherty, filmed and photographed entirely in Zurich. It is a rare occasion that Willie Doherty has realized a body of work outside of Northern Ireland. In addition, it is the very first time that he has focused so intently on snow, the presence of which receives an almost mystical connotation in his new film Without Trace (2013). A man disappears without trace in Zurich. The snow has made all traces disappear. Notebooks found in the manʼs apartment reveal his thoughts and impression of isolation. The screening of the 13-minute video work (Ed. of 3) is accompanied by a series of 11 large color C-prints on aluminium, as Without Trace (Into Thin Air) (2013, 120 x 160 cm, framed, Ed. Of 3). The photographs show a contemporary Zurich, acknowledging a temporality without being defined by it.
The photographic works alone already tell stories of the tensions between massive architectures and unruly nature; scenes in which practically all traces of single persons have been erased. In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, T.S. Eliot writes about the simultaneity of historical past and contemporary present in works of great art, naming it a “historical sense”. The author describes it as “a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together […]”. It is this feeling, that of many stories that are happening instantaneously, swirling together and separating incessantly, that is present in the video and photographic works of Willie Doherty. Since the 1980s
Original languageEnglish
Media of outputFilm
Size13 minutes
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 8 Mar 2013
EventWILLIE DOHERTY "WITHOUT TRACE" , Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich - Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland
Duration: 8 Mar 201313 Apr 2013
https://www.peterkilchmann.com/artists/willie-doherty/exhibitions/UID5C485450E3C1E-willie-doherty

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