David Claerbout

David Claerbout (1969, Kortrijk, Belgium) lives and works in Antwerp and Berlin. Trained as a painter and draughtsman, Claerbout developed a practice that operates at the intersection of photography, film, video, 3D animation and digital technology. His work revolves around temporality and duration, concepts he distinguishes carefully: where time is an independent state, duration is an in-between, a suspended condition. Claerbout describes his method as "sculpting in duration," shaping single scenes that can unfold, dilate or transform through the presence of the spectator and the passage of time. His large-scale video installations establish a spatial and perceptual relationship between projected image, exhibition space and viewer, inviting a mode of absorption in which memory, experience and the boundaries between past and present become unstable. Sound plays a crucial role: it can orient the viewer within a scene, or pull them further from it.

Claerbout studied at the Nationaal Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp (1992–1995), and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunst, Amsterdam (1996). In 2007, he was awarded the Will-Grohmann-Preis of the Berlin Akademie der Künste, and in 2010, he received the Peill-Preis of the Günther-Peill-Stiftung. He participated in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program from 2002 to 2003.

Solo exhibitions include Meditation in Peace, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei (2023); David Claerbout: The Close, Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee (2022); Unseen Sounds, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2021); Films, drawings and storyboards from the collection, De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg (2021); Olympia, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2019); Laziness in Action, Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2018); Night Vision (Dark Optics), Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2018); David Claerbout, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh (2018); Olympia, Schaulager, Laurent Stiftung, Münchenstein (2017); Olympia, M HKA, Antwerp (2016); Future, De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2016); David Claerbout: Architecture of Narrative, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); WIELS, Brussels (2011); David Claerbout, Espace 315, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007); and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2005).

Group exhibitions include David Caspar Friedrich, Kunsthalle Hamburg (2023); Out of the Box, Schaulager, Basel (2023); Fragment of an Infinite Discourse, Lenbachhaus, Munich (2022); Uncombed, Unforeseen, Unconstrained, Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, Venice (2022); Breathing, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2021); You Imagine What You Desire, 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); More Light, 5th Moscow Biennale (2013); 7th Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2012); The World Belongs to You, Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2011); and São Paulo Biennial (2010).

His work is held in major public collections including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fondation Louis Vuitton; S.M.A.K., Ghent; De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg; M HKA, Antwerp; Lenbachhaus, Munich; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, among others.