Arrigo Reuss

Please, Take The Exit 2017
video installation
Courtesy of the artist

What do we do behind closed doors? This question can be asked figuratively or quite literally. Set in a sparsely appointed motorway hotel, this film investigates the energy of people having spent a short (or longer) period of time in this particular space. By choice, the artist manipulates the surroundings through subtle props, as well as through a “fictional” soundscape underlining the piece.

It is an invitation for the viewer to create their own interpretation of events, which could have taken place in this particular hotel. Through the element of time (long shots), these interpretations can be analysed, evaluated and challenged by realising that assuming doesn’t mean knowing.

The quest for truth is as old as mankind itself and until this day we are still defining, redefining, possessing and arguing over, searching and ultimately hoping for an absolute truth which is meant to deliver us from our state of ‘not knowing’. We are desperate to know yet the one thing that we can be certain of is that we do not know anything to be absolutely true.

This installation is meant to inspire us to think twice before passing judgement as well to develop curiosity in the pursuit and creation of one’s own view of the world. Something worth fighting for.