Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
Mirjam Varadinis, curator
The Regulating Line, 2005
3’40”
Digital video
Produced on occasion of the 51st Venice Biennale-Swiss Pavilion
Made with the kind collaboration of the Musée du Luvre, Paris
Cast: Frédéric Dessains
Courtesy the artist and Elisabeth Kaufman, Zurich
The Louvre. The Life of Marie de Medici by Rubens: an immense baroque opera mixing breast plates with naked voluptuous bodies, flowing draperies with rigid ships; inspired by classical mythology, Rubens treats the biography of the seventieth century queen in an epic way. A young man stands in the middle of this mise en scène. His only possible response seems necessarily physical.
Shahryar Nashat was born in Geneva, 1975 and now lives and works in Berlin. He studied Fine Arts in Switzerland and Holland, and participated in artist residencies in Germany and Italy. In 2005 he represented Switzerland at the 51st Venice Biennale. Since the year 2000, he has shown his work at various international film and video festivals. He was included in H-Box at Tate Modern, 2008 (Video commissions touring the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the MUSAC in León and the MUDAM in Luxembourg) and he held a solo show in Das Beispeil, Geneva, in 2008.