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Simon Starling // Short Story / Brief History
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Simon Starling Born in the UK, 1967; lives in Copenhagen. Recent solo exhibitions: Kunstverein Heidelberg, Germany (2006), Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (2007), Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2008); recent group exhibitions: Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux (2007), Royal College of Art, London (2008), Lyon Biennale (2007).

Simon Starling’s film Short Story / Brief History (1999) tells the story of a silver fork, which is reduced to raw matter before metamorphosizing into another object. The camera lens mediates the integration of truth and fiction into one another: the absurd protraction of the production process and its subsequent notation pave the way for a fuller consideration of the social and cultural matrices in which these objects are usually embedded. Starling’s works are characterized by the detachment of objects from their context and surroundings and their subjection to a process of formal transformation; in this manner, he calls our attention to the original intentions and means of production that shaped them. The double projection features the same film, which is simultaneously played forwards and backwards – presenting the viewer with a visual palindrome.