This book is published in collaboration with Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf at the occasion of the exhibition David Lamelas - A New Refutation of Time, organized by the Kunstverein München and Witte de With, centre for contemporary art, Rotterdam; and the exhibition David Lamelas - House/People organized by Encore Bruxelles, Brussels

The exhibition A New Refutation of Time is Argentinean artist David Lamelas’s (Buenos Aires, 1946) first retrospective in Europe.
At Witte de With Lamelas is presenting an overview of his photographic series, films and media installations. Three early installations, includingSituación de tiempo, have been specially reconstructed for this exhibition.David Lamelas is one of the pioneers of the innovations in the sixties and seventies that redefined the status of art. Lamelas’s work from this period analyzes art as a means of communication, relating it to how information is conveyed by such media as the newspaper, radio and television. In light of the current discussion on the relationship between art and the entertainment industry, his critique of the passive role imposed on the public by the mass media is in particular once again topical.Lamelas’s work is unfettered. His search for new ways of making and presenting art brought him from Argentina to Europe, where he has maintained close ties with such artists and Marcel Broodthaers and Daniel Buren, and finally to the United States, where he has made the film and television industry the theme and context of his work. In retrospect, one can see that it was Lamelas’s decision to work beyond the institutional system of the visual arts that primarily caused his work to disappear from the public eye.With the exception of being included in the important retrospectiveReconsidering the Object of Art 1965 – 1976 held by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1995, Lamelas’s work has hardly been shown since the seventies. A New Refutation of Time calls attention to Lamelas’s film and media installations at a moment in which they can again be meaningful. This work contrasts significantly with recent art, which frequently takes the mass media as a starting point. In the work of the younger generation of artists, which grew up with film and television, the critical distance with which Lamelas provided insight into the effects of the various media has given way to full acceptance of the media and their influence. The alienating effect that Lamelas realizes through his use of media is replaced in their work by a self-evident appropriation of television’s visual language. His work challenges us to again take distance and to question the role of such media as television and the new media. Language: English