Mapping the figure | [Nude]

MAPPING THE FIGURE _________________________________________________________________________ Mapping the Figure investigates Ugo Rondinone’s sculptural series Nudes through five analogue 16mm films shot with a Bolex camera.  Through extreme close-ups, the camera isolates fragments of the human figure — a foot, fingers, an ear, a genital, a face — until their anatomical references begin to dissolve. Shifts in proximity, focus, and framing transform sculptural surfaces into fields of colour, light, and texture.  The camera follows a choreographed path across the sculptural figure, moving in extreme proximity along its contours, isolating anatomical fragments and shifting between focus, recognition and abstraction. Ugo Rondinone’s Nudes are highly detailed casts of dancers at the point of physical exhaustion, rendered in intensely saturated colours. The conceptual focus is the transition from movement to stillness. The sculptures preserve the physical traces of dance, while Mapping the Figure reintroduces movement through the choreography of the camera.  In this sense, Mapping the Figure also extends my ongoing artistic investigation of the figure in space, movement, and physical presence developed through the earlier collaboration with choreographer William Forsythe. Mapping the Figure [Study | Nude] c-print, permanent marker, wax crayon, foam board, cut outs 53cm x 31cm, Berlin 2026 Photo: Peter Welz | Studio The five films consist of three individual studies and two double exposures, each approximately three and a half minutes long, corresponding to the duration of a single roll of analogue 16mm film. Through extreme close-ups, the figure dissolves into fragments of detail and ultimately into pure colour. This fragmentation extends beyond the image itself, dispersing the figure into physical space and dividing the projection screen into distinct spatial elements. The screen is no longer a unified two-dimensional surface but becomes part of the sculptural and architectural structure of the installation. Photo: Luca Fossa By treating projection and screen as an architectural device, the work challenges the conventional two-dimensionality of the screen. The moving image becomes part of a spatial constellation in which the material presence of the film, the projected image, and the viewer's position interact. Film is understood not simply as a sequence of images but as a film-sculpture unfolding in space.