Raúl Video, 2022. 14’50” Stereo Sound, Full HD video

At the invitation of the Ballet of the Opera of Lyon, in collaboration with the Biennale, visual artist Hans Op de Beeck created a new art film with Raúl Serrano Núñez, dancer with the ballet company, as its sole performer.

Although the film bears the title ‘Raúl’, this is not a portrait of him, but here he becomes a fictional character who sits opposite us at a table. In what follows, Op de Beeck goes in search of an unspectacular little dance with small, banal objects. In stark contrast to the straightforward, consistent, decisive, unwavering, calculated man, man shows himself in his most touching, endearing way, when being tragicomic, clumsy, small, vulnerable, fragile, harmlessly failing.

There are some aesthetic similarities with the visual language used in Op de Beeck's large immersive installation at the Biennale. But where the installation evokes a large, deserted, depopulated, post-traumatic world, this film portrays man himself, up close and frontally, and the tone is small and playful.