painting, acrylic on canvas, 230 x 230 cm, video projection (projected onto the surface of the painting)

The video depicts a figure hung by its arms and legs, with a car air bag between its knees. The figure breathes and moves, as much as the tight and unnatural position allows.
Both layers of this work - video and painting - blend into one. Actually it becomes impossible to tell them apart. It seems that the projected image is inserted just underneath the canvas surface. Movement is the only way to determine what is projected and what is painted. The figure from Air Bag becomes a living form in the picture. Its breathing attempts to dislodge the air bag although, in fact, the figure is imprisoned by two bags. The first one, recorded on videotape, is held by the protagonist's body. The second, painted onto the canvas, is an anthropomorphic shape indiscernible from the figure's body. One air bag is a cocoon providing safety; the other is a cocoon hampering its movements. Shelter and bonds become the same thing here - simultaneously identified with the hero of the work. Safe and trapped. The hero is (its projection confirms it really exists) imprisoned in the aesthetic space of a representation that is seductive in its sleek, modernist charm.

painting, acrylic and blood on canvas, 130 x 130 cm, computer generated video projection, (projected onto the surface of the painting)

The video represents a figure seen in profile. A shadow is constantly forming on the painting's surface, which could metamorphose into a shape, which could be associated with a floppy disc - an information medium. The figure constantly runs around the disc. Its movement, like any cyclical change, is slow, almost static. The differences, in the metamorphosis of a man into a woman, are very subtle, so it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment of actual change. It happens that the viewer is deluded into seeing either a man or a woman depending on the trajectory of one's associations. In fact, you're watching an androgyne, or certain information (on 'disc') that the viewer will have to process him/herself to give this figure an identity. The viewer should also consider the specificity of the medium: blood, which contains biological (genetic) messages. These are then juxtaposed with the morphological (biological) transition of the person inscribed on the disc.
Why have you painted the disc with blood?
Dominik Lejman - I used blood to paint the closest and most material layer of the painting. However, it was not used in a pure state but mixed with a synthetic acrylic medium. The distance between the biological and synthetic was annihilated in the same way as the differences between the man who transforms into a woman in the projection, or the differences between the material, painted surface of the picture and its video-projected moving layer. We can never be certain as to the extent each layer co-creates the final depiction. Also an exact moment when blood is no longer blood anymore, but its synthetic substitute remains unspecified.

painting, acrylic on canvas, 33 x 41 cm, video projection depicting a man, a woman and an infant seen from above

All three figures sit in a car. They are naked and restrained by safety belts. The infant is in a special child's seat. Each figure is projected on to a light, painted form on the picture's surface - as if inserted into an 'air bag' (comp. Air Bag). Convertible Cathedral is the smallest work from the series of "time-based" paintings. The scale of the projections is very small The figures, as seen from above, are no bigger than 10-13 cm each. The scale of the work makes the figures, which are moving in the painting, seem very delicate and vunerable. Their fragility is somehow contrasted with the situation in which they appear. The heroes of Cathedral, the family (mom + dad + child), are located inside a contemporary, convertible car, protected by safety belts, secured by the cocoons of air bags. However, their miniature scale conveys a sense of imposed voyeurism, as if observing them from above (from a distance) makes the safety system look as fragile as the models' existence.

painting, acrylic on canvas, 230 x 230 cm, two video projections (projected onto the surface of the painting)

The first projection, in the foreground, depicts a naked, seated figure with his back to the viewer. The figure is involved in some kind of rhythmical activity. The second projection is a live transmission of what is happening in the space immediately in front of the painting. If the viewer passes in front of the camera, he/she is instantly projected onto the canvas.
This image consists of many layers. The first layer is composed of the painting's space, the projected figure as well as the gallery space. Each layer belongs to a different order of representation. The represented and the real are not only interconnected, but are also superimposed. This work is a mediation between these two orders of representation. While dealing with Stealth Painting, the viewer finds him/herself in the double, parallel and schizophrenic role of both subject and object of the viewer's own view. The viewer can observe him/herself on three different planes in the painting - something that can never be achieved in the mirror. The control the viewer extends over his/her own image begins to be questioned since the viewer does not know what the naked figure they face within the work is doing. The viewer watches an illusion of his or her own self who knows or sees something the viewer as subject/spectator will never learn.

painting, acrylic on canvas, 230 x 250 cm, video projection (onto the surface of the painting)

The film depicts an hour long shot of a male corpse.
In contrast to other "time-based" images in Air Conditional Interior (Breathe Deeply), the projected figure does not have its own corresponding traced shape. These forms, which imitate the shapes of projected figures, evoke associations with milk or sperm stains, sometimes referred to as "air bags" in Dominik Lejman's work (comp. Air Bag). There is a paradox in the Air Conditional (Breathe Deeply) projection. Film is a visual medium, but it is also a time recording device. In this case the subject of the representation is the corpse - there is a depiction of someone (something) for whom time no longer registers. The figure is still, without breathing and does not alter. Yet, time passes for the viewer, who stands breathing in front of a record of timelessness confronting one's own sense of time. A space created on canvas can be a model or a recollection of the ideal space of a chic, modern store. An architectural visualization, or an interior design which you can find in magazines covering this area, becomes in this context a "package for death." In this ideal, hypothetical space the corpse emerges, real and reported in a real-time record. A speculative, ideal and designed space emerges through a dead body and becomes even more factual. Intrusive, figured through a video projection presence of death gives place before a package - an aesthetic project.

video projection

A ballet dancer is doing a pas. But, there is something wrong. First, the figure's movement does not correspond to the laws of physics. In fact, the ballet dancer is dancing upside down, suspended by a rope bound to her ankle. The image of a ballet dancer hanging upside down is turned 180 degrees; in effect,the rules that govern the image's reality have been changed too. Gravitation does not come in to play. The dancer appears as if she is about to fly away. In classical ballet artists try to negate gravity. In fact, a concept of classical ballet is saturated with the idea of denying gravity. Here the only element keeping the dancer at ground level is the safety rope - a ballast or a leash - preventing her from breaking loose and flying away (falling up).

Contemporary crowds - virtual crowds of individuals hypnotised in extreme solitude. Communication tools - stimulate expectation, compress time in which we desire to encounter with the other. We slide down the surface, preferring to keep ourselves busy, in play, where eventually any experience becomes a factor of the leisure industry. Transitional crowd reminds skiers, single dots on a glacier, having nothing in common with each other except a strange activity, still uncanny for an alien's anthropologist.

In the exhibition space we see ourselves projected on a mural, filmed from above few seconds earlier, while following a pathwalk to the main gallery entrance. The delayed surveillance image interacts with another projection of a fictional, 'stripped bare' crowd passing the same route. The two projection layers become a single representation - stage for the spectacle of control, exposure, recognition.

The image of surveillance becomes a monumental decorative element, a part of the architectural aesthetics.

Vital part of my work concentrates on a split between human representation and a specific type of a 'stage setup' created by high technology conditioning human survival.
Works like Stealth Painting or Morphing Disc relate to the ongoing shift of perspective in our perception. The perspective- most often effected by political, biological, social or communicational aspects of contemporary reality.
The omnipresent electronic mirror shifts the perception of reality from real space into the ephemeral - declaring real space primarily as a stage setup for the construction of the virtual.
In 'time-based paintings' like Air Bag the video images are as if incorporated into canvas. Thus the painted surface becomes a multi-layered area of mediation between various orders of representation and reality. Their mutual impact becomes clearly visible particularly in Stealth Painting. Here a camera registers the viewer and transmits it in real time onto the surface and there confronts it with a second projection. The viewer and his/her gaze plays an important role as one of the image layers.
This specific, layered construct of my work became significant for most of my works in the solo exhibition The Luxury of Survival: both in the 'incorporated paintings' and in the installations like Consecration, Intel Inside. This particular kind of painting has recently been developed in the video-murals: Towards the Better (Skiers) and The Floor Piece (2001). While loosing control over his/her own image the viewer gets engaged in a reflection on the contemporary un/natural environment.

Dominik Lejman 2001