David Claerbout

David Claerbout was born in 1969 in Kortrijk, Belgium. He studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and at the Rijksakadamie of Visual Arts, Amsterdam, between 1992 and 1995. He lives and works between Antwerp and Berlin. 

Trained in painting and drawing, in the mid-1990s David Claerbout became interested in new technological media, including photography, video and sound. The incorporation of digital, from 2000 onwards, was an inevitable consequence of his trajectory and is now a determining factor in the artist's practice. As his audiovisual installations clearly show, Claerbout is a master of confusing the still and moving images. The perception of the passage of time, explored conceptually and sensitively, constitutes an inexhaustible field of interest in his works. Tangible to this research are concerns related to the construction of visuality and narrative, temporality and memory, perishability and regeneration, the biological and the digital.

The duality of perishability and regeneration and the confluence of the biological and the digital are also evident in the collection's video. 

Claerbout has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at the most prestigious institutions. Individually, he has exhibited at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2003); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007); WIELS, Brussels; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); Secession, Vienna (2012); MAMCO, Genève (2015); Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2017); Kunst Museum Winterthur (2020); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2021); and Milwaukee Art Museum (2022), among others. Recent group shows include Days of Endless Time, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (2014); WAITING. Between Power and Possibility, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2017); 100 ways to live a minute, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2020); and The World: Reglitterized, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021). He has been present at the Biennials of São Paulo (2010), Sharjah (2013), Moscow (2013) and Sydney (2014).

He received the Will-Grohmann-Preis from the Berlin Akademie der Künste in 2007 and the Peill-Preis from the Günther-Peill-Stiftung in 2010. He took part in the DAAD Artist Residency Programme between 2002 and 2003. His work is represented in various institutional collections, including: Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; MUHKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; S.M.A.K; Gent and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Sofia Nunes