Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image
September 10 – November 26, 2005
Davies Printing audio Visual Room
For over 30 years, video and film art have challenged many of the conventions of the art world. From questions of reproduction to issues surrounding acquisition, video and film art have grown from marginalized forms of artistic production to material for mainstream filmmaking and music video production. Point of View is an innovative commissioning and publishing project designed to make video and film art more accessible, and to fully utilize the qualities inherent to the medium.
The exhibition features works by eleven leading artists representing different generations and cultural perspectives: Francis Alys, David Claerbout, Douglas Gordon, Gary Hill, Pierre Huyghe, Joan Jonas, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist and Anri Sala.
Point of View Project Descriptions:
Francis Alys: El Gringo (2003) In El Gringo, viewers experience the discomfort of being an outsider when the camera is confronted by a pack of snarling dogs.
David Claerbout: Le Moment (2003) Claerbout uses cinematic techniques to create a suspenseful journey through a dimly lit forest that reaches an unexpected conclusion.
Douglas Gordon: Over My Shoulder (2003) In Over My Shoulder, Gordon uses hand gesticulations against a white sheet to communicate both violent and sensual emotions.
Gary Hill: Blind Spot (2003) A short encounter between the artist and a man on a North African street is slowed down, forcing the viewer into an intimate relationship with the subject and the shifting emotion seen in his face.
Pierre Huyghe: I Jedi (2003) Jediism, a movement devoted to establishing an internationally recognized faith, was born in 1977, shortly after the release of George Lucas’s first Star Wars film. Huyghe’s film serves as a mini-documentary devoted to this newly invented myth.
Joan Jonas: Waltz (2003) Jonas’s performance piece, an homage to 18th century French outdoor theater, incorporates mythology as well as spontaneously occurring events into the narrative.
Isaac Julien: Encore (Paradise Omeros: Redux) (2003) The stunning, color-saturated images that make up Julien’s work refer to the African Diaspora and the quest to find roots in a New World.
William Kentridge: Automatic Writing (2003) Kentridge’s hauntingly beautiful series of animated black and white drawings brings viewers into the artist’s unconscious.
Paul McCarthy: WGG (Wild Gone Girls) (2003) Depicting a sailing party gone wrong, McCarthy questions the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer in contemporary culture.
Pipilotti Rist: I Want to See How You See (2003) Rist explores the macrocosm of humanity in a video-art and music collaboration. A lyrical tale of a witch’s coven is played over images of a person where each body part symbolically represents an area of the world.
Anri Sala: Time After Time (2003) Literally depicting Point of View, Sala stimulates the viewers’ senses of sight and sound by forcing them to concentrate on a single puzzling image until it is revealed in a surprise ending.
Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image, 2004
A boxed set of eleven dvds by the following artists: Francis Alys, David Claerbout, Douglas Gordon, Gary Hill, Pierre Huyghe, Joan Jonas, Issac Julien, William Kentridge, Paul McCarthy, Pipilotti Rist and Anri Sala. The edition is unlimited.
Produced by: Bick Productions (Ilene-Kurtz-Kretzschmar and Caroline Bourgeois) and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (www.newmuseum.org).
Executive Producers: Jumex Collection, Mexico and Blink Digital, New York.
Sponsor: The New Art Trust, San Francisco.