Melvin Moti

Melvin Moti (born 1977) is a Dutch contemporary video and media artist who examines neurological, scientific and historic processes in relation to visual culture.

Life and work Moti was born in Rotterdam and studied audiovisual design (16- and 8mm films) at the Academie voor Beeldende Vorming in Tilburg from 1995 to 1999. After graduating, Moti continued his education at De Ateliers in Amsterdam between 1999 and 2001. In 2001, Moti was nominated for the Pontprijs, the Tilburgprijs and the Montevideo Award. Moti has had solo exhibitions at Mudam (Luxembourg), WIELS (Brussels), Galleria Civica (Trento), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt). Over the last years he has produced several films along with artist books, objects and drawings.

In his works, Moti researches neurological, scientific and historic aspects of visual culture to infuse his artworks with meaning. During the Second World War, the Hermitage was evacuated of artworks due to the imminent threat of bombing. No Show tells the story of a young museum employee who allegedly continued to give tours during that period. The film's narrator describes the absent works of art in great detail to attempt to evoke vivid pictures. In the interview, based on a variety of historical sources, a female voice interrogates “Desnos” about the famous “période des sommeils” just before the launch of Surrealism in 1922-23. Desnos refutes these ideas and engages in conversation with the interviewer, while the video projection slowly shows details of the Pompeian frescoes.

Miamilism (2008) Miamilism is a text based work that takes actress Mia Farrow as the focal point. It presents the cover of an issue of Life magazine illustrated with a faded photograph of Farrow. The magazine is concurrent with Roman Polanski’s film Rosemary's Baby (1968), and conceptually, the fading of the portrait is analogous to the way Farrow’s character develops in the film: Appearing increasingly pale throughout the film. When a person stares at a flat, monochrome surface for an extended period of time, the brain responds to the lack of visual stimuli by producing a colourful and abstract pattern of lights. Moti’s film explores this mental process through depicting his own pattern of colours.

From Dust to Dust (2010) From Dust to Dust is a Gesamtkunstwerk of an art book, a film and objects, exhibited at the Wiels in Brussels. The exhibition features a carved-wood bookstand holding Moti’s artist book Dust, which lies open at a colour reproduction of the Peacock Room (1876-7) by James McNeill Whistler (now in the Freer Gallery, Washington), as an early example of installations (called arrangements by Whistler). The walls of the exhibition space are lined with different shades of patterned fabrics. The main piece, again titled Dust, is a 12-minute digital animation of whirling dust particles. Finally, there are two drawings which underwent an artificial ageing treatment to look more than a century old, and the Portrait of Mary Barnadiston (ca. 1755) by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Moti explores ideas about time, space, perception and consciousness. His starting point was the early work of the Dutch artist JCJ Vanderheyden (1928-2012). Vanderheyden painted curved and crooked horizons onto narrow piles of wood, depicting the view from an airplane window and referring to an infinite empty space. The airplane window itself appears in part, but also functions as a frame lending itself to the image before the painting is completed. When spectators would tilt their heads, the world moved in a similar fashion, foregrounding perspective and perception within the works. In his displaying of Vanderheyden's works in the context of his own work and in combination with the work from the ABN AMRO collection, Moti combines Vanderheyden's ideas about consciousness with his own. Depending on how light falls on the work, it can vary between having a rigid texture or appearing to be a monochrome work.

The Creation of Myths For “The Creation of Myths” Moti created a series of four drawings, Secret Seals (2015), based on a book of nineteenth-century documents containing illustrations of secret hand gestures that inspire strength and meditation. These hand gestures are supposedly used by Japanese Shingon Buddhists, to codify the cosmic function of body, speech and spirit.

Space and Absence In fourth final part of Spectral Spectrum, “Space and Absence”, Moti explores consciousness. He presents a work by the Dutch artist Lidwien van de Ven (1963), whose work focuses on subjects such as politics and religion. Her photographs depict events that might seem familiar from journalism - however, they present things that fall outside the context of news stories and explore the invisible side of reporting by the media. By using van de Ven's photographic work, Moti attempts to explore a gap between looking and understanding, and challenges perception and reason. 2012 - One Thousand Points of Light: Melvin Moti, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom 2007 - Docking Station: Melvin Moti - E.S.P., Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2005 - The Black Room, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Group exhibitions

2019 - Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey 2014 - Yokohama Triennial, Yokohama, Japan 2013 - Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy 2004 - Something Happened, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam at the KunstRAI, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2002 - Early Works, De Ateliers, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 2015 ABN AMRO Art Award, Amsterdam, the Netherlands