Rodney Graham: Reverie Interrupted by the Police
January 28 – April 2, 2006
Rodney Graham is regarded as one of the most important contemporary artists working today. Recognized internationally for his intellectually rigorous art, his multi-layered and complex art includes photography, film, video, sculpture, music and text based works. It negotiates between many different identities and territories drawing connections between them, more specifically borrowing the language and isolated narratives from the worlds of science, film, pop culture and art history. For this presentation, Graham will present a new video installation inspired by historical cinematography. In A Reverie Interrupted by the Police, Graham plays a silent film era convict. Graham states: “The scenario is ambiguous: perhaps I am a prisoner who has been released temporarily in order to perform a John Cage style prepared piano piece for a theatre audience under the supervision of a uniformed police officer, who escorts me onto the stage and remains there as I perform, or perhaps we are a vaudeville duo, an ‘act’, a really terrible act… The idea for this piece came from a 1950’s essay by Andre Breton where he draws attention to a radio broadcast of September 28, 1951 entitled ‘The Variety Cup of France,’ wherein listeners were subjected to “a concert given by ‘artistes’ from the Prefecture of Police, complete with an inspector’s monologue, and air from Pagliacci, a bit of piano playing by a handcuffed man. But I am sure Chico Marx must have done something of this sort, though I can’t recall seeing it in any of the Marx Brothers movies.”
Graham’s work can be found in many public collections worldwide, and has been shown in landmark exhibitions such as Munster, Documenta IX, and the Venice Biennale. He has exhibited in all major museums in both Europe and America including the DIA Centre for the Arts, New York, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and K21, Dusseldorf. His North American retrospective is presently on exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia until 23rd December 2005. This show has toured from the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver.