Willie Doherty: Three Potential Endings

Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Limmatstrasse, Zurich

Three Potential Endings was shot on location in Dublin during the summer of 2008. The work is structured around three open-ended sequences involving a businessman who finds himself outside of the familiar surroundings of the office. The work does not provide any explanation or rationale but rather places the man in direct confrontation with the architectural spaces where he finds himself. The work presents a figure besieged with the possibility of failure and uncertainty.

 

The three sequences are simultaneously fragmented and connected by a fourth sequence that shows the man pacing around a small, confined space. It is unclear whether he is lost in thought and deep in concentration or whether he is confused and oblivious to his surroundings.

 

The figure appears to be both contained by the parameters of each space yet free to leave. The resolution of any possible narrative recedes and the focus of work shifts to an awareness of the vulnerability of the body in space.

 

Three Potential Endings extends the concerns of previous works, such as Closure, 2005 and Passage, 2006. Like these works Three Potential Endings developed out of an investigation into the spatial and socio/political conditions of specific urban locations and deploys the intervention of the human figure to explore the dynamics of these spaces. (Willie Doherty, December 2008)

 

In addition to the film, a series of photographs will be on display.