Roi Soleil

„Aiiie!“ „Oohhhh!“ „Jioo.“ „Huuuu!“ „Hoi.“ „Ufff.“ „Urrrr.“ „Aahhh.“ „Errrh“, „Mu “: Der Sonnenkönig stöhnt, seine letzte Stunde hat geschlagen. Er liegt erschöpft darnieder, in einer Welt, die nur aus Rotlicht und einem Rest von Luxus besteht: Petits fours, dazu ein Spiegel, der den Narzissmus des Todgeweihten verlebendigt. Und natürlich – die turmhohe Perücke, die schon Jean-Pierre Léaud in Serras LA MORT DE LOUIS XIV trug. ROI SOLEIL ist die Dokumentation einer tragikomischen Performance in einer Lissaboner Galerie im Jahr 2017, mit Lluís Serrat in der majestätischen Hauptrolle. (Robert Weixlbaumer)

In Anwesenheit von Albert Serra und Montse Triola.

Albert Serra cultivated an art at home in cinemas as much as in exhibition venues, blurring the boundaries between these rather different spaces. If never as thoroughly as with ROI SOLEIL, which intertwines installation and performance art in the creation of a minimalist beast best described as the brutally ironic, red-neon-cool art scene-double of Serra’s warmest and maybe most heart-felt film so far, LA MORT DE LOUIS XIV (2016). The images and sounds for ROI SOLEIL were recorded in early 2017 at the Galeria Graça Brandão (Lisbon) where Lluís Serrat (in just-about every possible sense the opposite of LA MORT DE LOUIS XIV’s Jean-Pierre Léaud) performed the monarch’s agony for seven days in front of the space’s visitors, using merely a few props, most importantly: a massive wig and a tacky, multi-tired cake stand. Some 29 hours of material showing Serrat shuffing around, lying down, moaning, writhing, then finally keeping dead still were condensed by Serra into a 61-minute tight piece that from mid-August on was screened for a month twice an evening at the Galeria Cadaqués (Girona) as a video-installation in cinema-like circumstances. And now, it has arrived where it always belonged: cinema! (Olaf Möller)

In the presence of Albert Serra und Montse Triola.