Melvin Moti

Melvin Moti (born 1977) is a Dutch contemporary video and media artist who examines neurological, scientific and historic processes in relation to visual culture.

[2] Some of Moti's most frequently exhibited works include: In No Show, the viewer is tempted to use his own imagination: in this film, the spectator hears a tour being conducted at the Leningrad Hermitage, alongside static images of emptied museum galleries.

[2] Moti's first solo exhibition in a museum, The Black Room, features a montage of two disparate elements: footage of frescos from the Villa Agrippa near Pompeii and a sound track consisting of an imaginary interview with the surrealist poet Robert Desnos.

[8][9] In the interview, based on a variety of historical sources, a female voice interrogates “Desnos” about the famous “période des sommeils” just before the launch of Surrealism in 1922-23.

[9] The interviewer voices her concern about the possible mental health issues as a result of the surrealist’s experiments with ‘sleep-writing’, a form of self-hypnosis during which the subjects recorded poems, texts and images.

[10] Desnos refutes these ideas and engages in conversation with the interviewer, while the video projection slowly shows details of the Pompeian frescoes.

[14] When a person stares at a flat, monochrome surface for an extended period of time, the brain responds to the lack of visual stimuli by producing a colourful and abstract pattern of lights.

Vanderheyden painted curved and crooked horizons onto narrow piles of wood, depicting the view from an airplane window and referring to an infinite empty space.

[2] Moti's own work Miamilism underwent a similar treatment, with Mia Farrow's skin tone becoming increasingly pale throughout the years.

The page from his book used in Moti's exhibition shows Zen priests during zazen (a form of meditation), the practitioner subdues his will and surrenders to the changing environment inside and outside the body.

Her photographs depict events that might seem familiar from journalism - however, they present things that fall outside the context of news stories and explore the invisible side of reporting by the media.

By using van de Ven's photographic work, Moti attempts to explore a gap between looking and understanding, and challenges perception and reason.