Sunday and the Collection – Norman Leto, Buttes Monteaux 3 – film screening

Norman Leto, Buttes Monteaux 3, 2009

3D animation, 27 min 37 sec

Work donated to Arsenal Gallery by the artist.

16 October 2016, Sunday, 10.00 – 18.00

Arsenal Gallery, ul. A. Mickiewicza 2, Białystok

Free entry!

Word description:

Buttes Monteaux 3 is a vision of a virtual edifice with an unclear purpose. The viewer, sucked into the structure of the work, walks with the narrator through the exhibition, hotel and residential interiors. The very realistic maze of corridors, stairs and rooms was generated by 3D graphics software. Elements of the reality we know and recognize (toilets, kitchen) are mixed up with the order of the computer-generated imaginarium: a sculpture presenting the luxurious car of a man who committed suicide (the former boss of the narrator), or the white figures having sex in front of a white camera. Large fragments of the work are dedicated to insect-like delegates – vectors used in research on, for example, the behaviour of crowds. They appear in the toilet bowl or on special observation fields; their behaviour is controlled and commented on by the artist. The whole situation seems as if happening in a mental space, as if we were dealing with a visualized hallucination whose sequences do not create a continuous narrative.
 
Buttes Monteaux 3is an absolute work whose concept, however, goes beyond a cohesive synthesis of different art disciplines. Leto merges narration with animation, images and music, creating a new reality. The alternative world, governed by imagination and scripts for developing computer software, seems to be an all-embracing vision. Leto stands in the centre of this creation, showing the obsolete character of the ancient dispute about the validity of identifying the artist with the creator. He is the narrator in the film. The props used include his virtual works, such as the lifeshape of Adolf Hitler, or a man in a coma.
 
Leto’s work is to a great extent about itself. The effort to place his own actions within the continuously created opus magnum, combined with the life and imagination of the artist, is related to a reflection on the interdependencies between the individual (artist) and society. In the context of the artist’s other work, the film Sailor (2010), Buttes Monteaux 3 is only an element of a holistic vision, and one of the delegates is always different from the rest of the group. The precise animation is also a means to explore the computer medium and a springboard to new solutions – the ever more advanced models of alternative worlds.
 
Izabela Kopania