What better place to show a multi-screened takedown of capitalism than the PalaisPopulaire, a slick, climate-controlled former palace, bought on the profits of Deutsche Bank.
Made in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Isaac Julien’s film finds poetic and vulgar ways to visualise unseen flows of capital. There’s the smug art dealer played by James Franco, the dislocated Filipino cleaner stuck in a Dubai investment skyscraper, and an auctioneer played by Simon de Pury, who’s an auctioneer in real life – oh so meta.
The heady juxtaposition of wealth creation and loss give the work its tremendous emotional range and thrilling sense of pomp.
Near the end, the artist himself makes a cameo, indelibly implicating himself in the vast sums that sweep through the high-end art market which always manages to defy the worst of the economic downturns. There’s a reason that Deutsche Bank has one of the world’s biggest corporate art collections. Somehow, for all its well-meaning intentions, the work is too stylised and studied to be the masterpiece it sets out to be. ★★★
- PalaisPopulaire, Unter den Linden 5, Mitte, through Jul 10. Get more information here.
