2010
Digital video with sound, light stands, painted wood,
projector, text component revealed in variable ways
Duration of projection, 3 min 36 seconds, continuous loop
Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Detail, Le Monde, June 29, 1967, Photograph in artist's frame, 27 x 36 inches each, Diptych, Edition of 3 + 2 AP
Les Samouraïs, Video stills, Print edition of 10, Photograph, 66.5 x 50.75 cm
Les Samouraïs takes the opening scene from Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967), and through image and sound, makes an alteration by adding an additional caged bird to the auteur’s opening scene. The simple gesture foils the film’s theme of isolation while fictitiously modifying an occurrence within historical reality. The protagonist, played by Alain Delon, is an assassin who adheres to a life of solitude and detachment. In the opening scene he finishes a cigarette in bed, walks over to the bird—the only creature he truly connects with—and then puts on his trench coat and hat before closing the door behind him to face the world outside. Melville wrote, directed, and edited his films, including Le Samouraï, in Studios Jenner in the 13th arrondissement in Paris. While finishing the film, the studio was destroyed by a fire and the female finch was the only casualty.
Exhibition History
Two Birds, Eighty Mountains, and a Portrait of the Artist, Arthouse, Austin, 2011Stand Opposite the Chorus, Galerie Rotor, Gothenburg, 2011
Time's Arrow, Galerie Nordenhake, 2010
Kierkegaard's Walk, Galeria Marília Razuk, São Paulo, 2010
Les Samouraïs, FDC Brussels, 2010
Reviews
O’Neill-Butler, Lauren. “Review: Lisa Tan, Arthouse at the Jones Center." Artforum. April, 2011, p. 222. Print.link / pdf
“500 words, Lisa Tan.” Artforum. April 10, 2010. Web.
link / pdf