Past Exhibitions
MIT List Visual Arts Center
David Claerbout
Showing:
February 8 – April 6, 2008
Opening Reception:
Friday, February 8, 2008, 5-7pm
Artist Talk:
Friday, February 8, 2008, 5-6pm
Join us in the Bartos Theatre for a conversation between artist David Claerbout and LVAC curator Bill Arning
David Claerbout, Sections of a Happy Moment, 2007
Yvon Lambert, Paris/New York; Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Anvers; Hauser & Wirth, Zurich/London;
Johnen/Schöttle, Cologne/Berlin/Munich
Exhibition Catalog
Purchase your copy of the exhibition catalogPurchase Catalog
Press Release
Press releases areavailable in PDF
format.
Press Release
Educational Brochure
Educational Brochures areavailable in PDF format.
Educational Brochure
This is the first museum survey exhibition of works by Belgian artist David Claerbout. Since 1996, Claerbout has explored the boundaries and overlaps between video and still photography, blurring the line between the still and the moving image. He digitizes found photographs and then introduces moving elements, and with them, time. He also uses digital video to create mini-narratives set in buildings or urban spaces that play on the changing light and passage of time to interrogate "the substance of time."
Influenced by phenomenology, David Claerbout has developed a body of work that challenges our habitual perceptions, testing the limit of all forms of visual reproduction in his endeavor to transport reality. "I belong to a generation of artists that has problems with the aura of the art object, and that's why I work in a medium, digital video, historically associated with mass culture," says the artist.

David Claerbout, Bordeaux Piece, 2004
Centre Pompidou, New Media, Paris
Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert, New York/Paris
![]() |
| David Claerbout, Sections of a Happy Moment, 2007, Yvon Lambert, Paris/New York; Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Anvers; Hauser & Wirth, Zurich/London; Johnen/Schöttle, Cologne/Berlin/Munich |
Support for David Claerbout has been generously has been provided by Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, Switzerland; Minister for Culture, Youth and Sports, Flemish Community; Nimoy Foundation; the Council for the Arts at MIT; the Society of Friends of Belgium in America; and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Media Sponsor: Phoenix Media/Communications Group.






