PARIS.- Louidgi Beltrame (born in 1971 in Marseille, lives in Paris) is presenting a new film in Palais de Tokyo’s historic movie theatre, room 37, entitled El Brujo (the sorcerer in Spanish). In an archaeological landscape on the Peruvian coastline, it brings back to life the theme of young Antoine Doinel’s flight towards the sea, in the closing scene of Truffaud’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959). While José Levis Picón, the curandero (healer) who embodies Antoine, runs towards the seashore, Jean-Pierre Léaud, its original interpreter, wanders in the streets of Paris.

Louidgi Beltrame’s films make use of fiction as a possible means to approach History. Based on the recording of real life, they are often inhabited by "story-less" characters haunting empty places. From Hiroshima to Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Chandigarh or Chernobyl, the artist sees film as an intermediary, in particular in this case between two people (José Levis Picón and Jean-Pierre Léaud), and two contexts (El Brujo and Paris).

After dealing with themes associated with nuclear disasters (Energodar, 2010; Les Dormeurs, 2006) or architectural, urban utopias (Brasilia/Chandigarh, 2008), Louidgi Beltrame left for Peru to follow the traces of the minimalist American artist Robert Morris. The resulting film (Nosotros también somos extraterrestres, 2014) deploys a visual, sonic tale about the relationships between architecture, minimal sculpture and Land Art.

"I film these ghost architectures – today deactivated – in their material aspect, as monumental sculptures. These empty forms nevertheless remain inhabited by the strata of stories, telling of their conditions of production, or the ideologies that motivated their construction, as well as the people who built and used them." 1

"Since Brasilia/Chandigarh, I’ve been working a lot on the position of the camera when it comes to architectural forms. This comes down to placing the spectators in the position from where they see an object, which is not unlike the way Robert Morris raises questions about the spectators’ position in an exhibition of minimal art, and the way in which a work is created, through the relationship between a look and the presence of a spectator." 2

Entitled El Brujo (the wizard), the new film and installation presented by Louidgi Beltrame at Palais de Tokyo have been produced in association with another archaeological site: a necropolis whose landscape is organised into pyramids and excavations. This play of geometric lines, which can be compared to the structure of film editing, is echoed in a piece of modular synthetic music: Triangle composed by the musician Jacno in 1979. Using a temporal, geometric mechanism, and far away from any nostalgic comfort, Louidgi Beltrame seems to be building up a shadow drama in which ghosts remind us as much of the historic past, as they do of present time.

"Louidgi Beltrame makes architectural films based on fiction, as opposed to what is generally done in the cinema, where the set is supposed to serve the plot. The narrative development is a pretext for shifting bodies and their movements determine the framing and interpretation of the buildings or urban spaces." 3

Winner of the SAM Prize for Contemporary Art in 2014, Louidgi Beltrame studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, and at the Villa Arson in Nice.

From 1999 to 2004, he was a resident at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, then at Le Pavillon, Laboratoire de recherche du Palais de Tokyo.

Since 2003, his pieces have been shown in a large number of exhibitions. His work has in particular been given solo shows at the Frac Basse-Normandie (Caen, 2015), (Germany, 2015), the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (Paris, 2010), the Centre d’Art Les églises (Chelles, 2010) and the Jeu de Paume (Paris, 2006). In 2013, he took part in the film programme set up by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as part of the 11th Sharjah Biennal.

Curator: Julien Fronsacq

1 Artist’s statement quoted in the presentational text of his solo show Gunkanjima at the Centre d’Art Les églises, Chelles (2010).

2 Louidgi Beltrame, "Une idée du progrès poussée jusqu’à une sorte de collapse", in Le Journal des Arts, number 322, 2 to 15 April 2010.

3 Patrick Javault, "Coïncidence des plans", in Louidgi Beltrame, text for the solo show of Louidgi Beltrame at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, October 2008.