Statement

Orlow's work tackles the impossibility of narrating or representing the past and addresses the spatial conditions of history and memory. Spanning locations in Africa, the Arctic, Eastern Europe and Switzerland, his work can often be seen to employ a method of both horizontal-lateral and vertical-archival investigation in order to explore blind spots in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Orlow's modular installations comprising video, photography, drawing, sound and text, can be seen as a re-mix of the 'real' which permeates perception and performs a subtle operation that activates the potential of ruptures and ruins as ethical concerns of the present.

Biography

Orlow's work has been included in exhibitions and film-festivals internationally and is represented in private and public collections. Both in 2009 and in 2008 he was the recipient of the prestigious Swiss Art Award at Art Basel. Recent solo exhibitions include Les Complices, Zurich, The Jewish Museum New York, Blancpain Art Contemporain Geneva and Argos Brussles. Recent group exhibitions and screenings include The Whole World at Tate Modern, the Third Guangzhou Triennial at Guangdong Museum of Art, New Work UK at Whitechapel Gallery London, Tempo Tempo at Opelvillen Rüsselheim, Artfutures at Bloomberg Space London, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Retracing Territories at Fri-Art Kunsthalle Fribourg, New Lands at BFI Southbank London, Videonale at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Around the World in 80 days at Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, Arnolfini Bristol and ifa-Galerie, Berlin.

Publications include, Oddly... (2009), The Benin Project (London: future perfect, 2007), Deposits (Berlin: Greenbox, 2006) and Re: the archive, the image, and the very dead sheep (London: Double agents, 2004). Recently published essays include 'How To Do Things with Words and a Camera' in Episode (Artwords, 2008), ‘The Dialectical Image’ in The Cinematic, ed. D. Campany (MIT: 2007), ‘Latent Archives, Roving Lens’, in Ghosting: the role of the archive in contemporary film and video (Picture This: 2006), ‘Talk is Cheap: Some Notes on Freedom of Speech and the Ethics of Listening’, in 1+1+1 (Double agents: 2005).

Uriel Orlow was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1973 and works in London and Zürich. He studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, followed by post-graduate studies in Philosophy, Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Geneva and doctoral research under the supervision of Michael Newman, Mark Nash, Andrew Benjamin and Joram ten Brink at The Slade School of Art (UCL) and at the University of the Arts, London where he completed his PhD in Fine Art in 2002.

Uriel Orlow taught on the BA and MA Fine Art courses at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and Goldsmith College, University of London from 1997 to 2005. He is currently a senior research fellow at the University of Westminster. He is also a member of Double agents, a group composed of the artists/curators Anne Tallentire (joint convenor), Graham Ellard (joint convenor), Lisa Panting, Uriel Orlow, Jaki Irvine and Adam Chodzko.Together with Michal Sapir he co-curates the quarterly Betsey's Salon, an interdisciplinary quarterly arts based salon in London.

Full CV...