EXHIBITION: NORMAN LETO. PROOF OF CONCEPT

OPENING: 20/07/2024, 19.00

Curator: Stach Szabłowski

Tours with artist and curator:
24 Jul (Wednesday), 18.00
25 Jul (Thursday), 18.00

The exhibition is part of the Artistic Scene of the 24^th edition mBank New Horizons IFF.

Proof of Concept is a project that draws on the figure of a studio visit. Through the exhibition we visit Norman Leto in his atelier, or rather in the two ateliers that he uses in his work. In one, he is developing his most recent cinematic venture, a film under the working title Pilot 9_11. The artist gives us an insight into his project-in-process, showing related film sketches, tests of technical solutions and fragments of sequences. In the second atelier, Norman works on his easel paintings.

We visit Norman in his studio seven years after the premiere of Photon – his last film, which won awards at the New Horizons Festival and the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Since then, Norman has been working on Pilot 9_11, which will take several years more to complete. As was the case with the artist’s previous feature, the new project is primarily set in the virtual realm. Although the film industry is based on teamwork, Norman reduces this aspect to a minimum – he models the digital material like a sculptor working alone in his studio. In Pilot 9_11, Norman returns to the attack on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 – an event that symbolically finished the 20^th century and ushered in the unstable world we live in today. However, the film sequences shown as part of the Proof of Concept exhibition do not provide any insight into the plot. They function as autonomous video works, outside the narrative of the main story.

The video projections at 66P are juxtaposed with Norman’s easel paintings. While creating their iconography, the artist experimented with artificial intelligence generators. Although none of the paintings refers to the film, they were all created in parallel to his work on it. The artist has never severed his links with the visual arts field, and neither has he interrupted his painting practice.

Proof of Concept closes with a video entitled Sailor Update, One Decade Later [Vlog]. In it, the artist returns to the protagonist of his mystified literary autobiography and debut film titled Sailor. The resemblance of this figure to Norman Leto is intentional and not coincidental, but sometimes deceptive. This construct, agent-doppelganger or proxy has been appearing in Norman’s stories to perform various philosophical or narrative tasks. Resurrected after 15 years, the protagonist returns to tell us about a day in the life of Norman Leto.

Sailor Update is a dialectical device linking the poles between which the exhibition is set: the two studios, the documentary and the feature, the physical and the virtual. It also highlights the relationship between painting and film in Norman’s practice – these alternating disciplines are elements that keep the creative process in balance and expressions of freedom, which has remained a fundamental category for Norman Leto since his debut.

Further information: https://66p.pl/en/proof-of-concept-norman-leto