The owner of Turkish video art, Ahmet Öğüt’s ‘Short Circuit’ and Fikret Atay’s ‘Bang-Bang,’ collector Jean-Conrad Lemaitre has been collecting video works for 15 years.
This photo shows a scene from Fikret Atay’s video art work, Ban Bang. The Lemaitre collection has been on display in many countries around the world.
Fulfilling a desire to live in the present rather than the past, French art collector Jean-Conrad Lemaitre and his wife have become two of the world’s leading connoisseurs of video art.
“We used to collect other genres, such as paintings and photographs, but we slowly shifted to video art,” Lemaitre recently told the Hürriyet Daily News in explaining his infatuation with the genre, which includes works from leading Turkish artists. “And there are two reasons for that. The first is that the moving image is a very contemporary medium. My wife and I have been fanatics of moving images for more than 40 years. And second, when an artist we followed moved to the medium from another, we always followed him. That is how we ended up collecting video art.”
The Lemaitres, who have been collecting examples from the genre for the past 15 years, have 107 videos and nine films in their collection, which includes works from leading Turkish practitioners of the art form, Ahmet Öğüt (“Short Circuit”) and Fikret Atay (“Bang-Bang”).
“We have been living outside of France for 33 years and collecting art from the countries we live is a way of understanding the local culture,” he said, adding that they had no specific geographical focus when collecting. “We have collected the works of many artists from Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.”
The couple only collects the works of emerging artists. “Our children were born into a society of moving image. Video is the medium of our time and I want to live in this time. That is why we only buy young artists’ works.”
There have been issues in conserving the works, but this has not stopped the couple from exhibiting their extensive collection around the world.
Lemaitre said their first exhibition, displaying 25 works, was at La Maison Rouge in Paris in 2006. “When I entered the exhibition hall it was like a school yard with children in. People laughing, fighting, screaming – and when I went out of the hall there was all silence. Then, I understood video was life and it made you feel that you alive,” he said. “That’s the kind of effect I am looking for in a piece, and if I see that I buy it.”
Collection goes on display around the world
The Lemaitre collection has been on display in many countries around the world, including Germany; Morocco; San Diego, United States; Sao Paul, Brazil; San Sebastian, Spain; as well as Peru. In France the collection was exhibited in Paris, Marseilles and, in Octover, in Bourges.
He also lends the works to other exhibitions and museums. “We always lend or display on request, we never make demands on curators,” he said, adding that lending brought more life to the collection while also increasing the visibility of the artist.
Lemaitre said displaying the video at home created a festive atmosphere that was unlike displaying a painting on the wall.
“We have a screen and projector, when visitors come we put a video on and watch it together. With a painting, it is not like that. You hang it on the wall and get used to seeing in time. Finally, you don’t even look at it. But displaying a work like we do is sharing a special moment,” he said.
Conservation demanding but manageable
Lemaitre said the conservation of video art was complicated. Most of the works in the couple’s collection are in a digital master format, he said, adding that he wanted to convert them all into digital files to be able to keep them on a hard drive.
He said digital master was manageable as a format, but digital beta is difficult because data must be transferred to another tape every nine years. Conversion to digital files, however, does not cause a loss of resolution quality, he added.
The reason why conservation is complicated was due to the fact that the medium’s technology has changed quite rapidly in recent years and has required fast adaptation, Lemaitre said.
“But it is not that big a deal. Apart from the 25 works that we bought in the last two years, I have already converted my entire collection to digital files,” he said.
(Source: www.hurriyetdailynews.com )