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Ulrik Heltoft, Otaku, 2001
C-print, aluminium
107,5 x 86 cm

Coincidential Subtleties

Ulrik Heltoft’s works are produced in a devoting process over time, which you discover as well in his works. This devoting process over time can be traced back to earlier works, although I will pay special attention to Ulrik Heltoft’s recent works in order to look closer analytically on how coincidental subtleties are constructed over time and movement.

Constructing coincidental subtleties

The works give you as a viewer a subtle experience on unspotted details from the everyday life, which enriches you and teases your curiosity. This enrichment is also established via the very characteristic use of various investigations of media. Operating in a cross media field such as video, photography, object and slide projection it is here Heltoft’s conceptual experiments are displayed. The technique and the conceptual approach to cross media are especially shown in the video called Open Door, which in its simple composition has a photographic and sculptural dimension, installed as an object, therefore challenging the viewer’s perception.

In the work The Open Door (2004, 28 sec) you are let with great curiosity as a spectator behind an object, where a wide screen is placed directly on the floor. The simple, geometric and symmetric object reflects the video’s well-composed visual frame and setting. You see on open door filmed from a terrace in a living room. The house is a modernistic architecture of Jorge Pardo. The video’s pictorial composition is almost photographic with its immobile cut. This photographic dimension is also emphasized indirectly with the title The Open Door referring to William Fox Talbot’s photography, The Open Door, (1844).

The visual composition, despite its closed system, produces as well an out of field in the picture, which opens a durée therefore captivating the viewer, because, suddenly you see a dog that tries desperately to come out of the door. But a stick in the dog’s mouth prevents him, although he breaks free from the door and he disappears from the camera. After a man stands at the terrace, measuring the length of the door with the stick. While the dog’s action is composed the man’s is coincidental.

The situation is constructed even though it seems coincidental via a classic narrative structure, where a problem occurs, it must be resolved and redemption may happen. The changes that happen are because of the play within the movement image and because of the different actions. Energy is applied where the situation of the characters’ results in actions, which change through mobile cuts, that is to say a movement that occurs between the objects. The situations are related to movements and therefore changing as a mobile section in the durée. (Gilles Deleuze, On Cinema, “On movement image”)

Although in the video there is a secret that is not so evident, but has significance of the duree in the video. In the video an important change occurs via a single cut which is placed between the dog and the man. A piece of wood from the stick is a trace deriving from the dog’s “violent” gesture. The piece is placed in the entrance of the door and disappears slowly, when the dog runs out of the picture and is completely erased when the man enters the picture. This is the only evidence that a change occurs in the mobile section via the cutting technique.

Phenomenological “coincidental” traces

In the work 52 Cards (2005, 52 synchronized photos) Ulrik Heltoft traces phenomenological situations from the everyday life. The cross medial interest is as well evident on how to construct movement through the photographic series of dealing 52 cards. Although there is no narrative, it allows the viewer to imagine why the woman is performing/dealing these cards. Since she is out of context you can imagine many different stories and connection to this situation. An intense spot on an unspotted situation unfolds phenomenological traces.

Ulrik Heltoft also follows these traces in another piece in the work Ghost Town I & II (2004, Camera with two videos, 37 sec + 58 sec) where situations from the urban life are filmed through a digital camera. Via visual experiments the world is transmitted without awareness. Ulrik Heltoft’s captures moments of unexpected situation. Through this open approach Ulrik Heltoft surprises and twists the viewer’s expectation and perception plus positioning the everyday life unspotted details.

The Subtleties of the everyday life

With these coincidental constructions Heltofts’s works form subtle scenes from the everyday life, presented in cross media over movement and time. The works open up another kind of optical construction of time and movement in a curious way. It opens up for another time dimension exactly because of the fluid actions and coincidental situations, although sometimes constructed. There exists a phenomenological sensitivity and on openness towards details, unspotted traces and coincidences that is very rare.

by Lotte Juul Petersen

For images of Ulrik Heltoft's first solo show in 2005 at the gallery, click here
His second solo show at kirkhoff was in 2006. Click here for images