Norman Leto
Buttes-Monteaux 1
Buttes Monteaux 1 is a computer animation that Norman Leto first showed at
the exhibition Song Buttes Monteaux with the Music Video and Three Oil Paintings at the Nova Gallery in Kraków in 2007. The artist used animation and editing techniques to create a hypnotising vision in which reality and fiction interpenetrate. Made in the convention of a music video, the work consists of three parallel tracks: music, visualization, and text appearing at the bottom of the screen. The post-grunge atmosphere of the song, performed by the artist and his friends, is emphasized by a poster with Cobain’s hair, appearing in several shots in the film. The minimalist, computer-created interiors show paintings that were displayed in the gallery during the show, as well as shapes generated and controlled by crowd-behaviour simulation software. The work touches on purely existential issues, indicating the confusion of modern man, the lack of authenticity.
Norman Leto (aka Łukasz Banach)
(b. 1980) a visual artist, writer, filmmaker and multimedia artist renowned for projects combining art, science and technology. He created a fictional artist who soon became his alter ego and artistic pseudonym. Leto’s debut exhibition took place in 2007 at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre
for Contemporary Art. He is the author of the full-length films Sailor (based on his eponymous novel) and Photon.