Jason Rhoades
Mark Lewis
Rodney Graham
Shirin Neshat
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Corinna Schnitt
Natacha Nisic
Paul Pfeiffer
Steve McQueen
Kimsooja
Thomas Steffl
Richard T. Walker
Doris Krystof
Maria Anna Bierwirth
Big Picture (Locations / Projections). The presentation revolves around a selection of 12 installations which are displayed in a specially designed architectural setting (Stadler Prenn Architekten, Berlin) that is designed to emphasize the spatial and physical aspects of the film projections. On show, works by Jason Rhoades, Mark Lewis, Rodney Graham, Shirin, Neshat, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Corinna Schnitt, Natacha Nisic, Paul Pfeiffer, Steve McQueen, Kimsooja, Thomas Steffl, Richard T. Walker.
With the exhibition Big Picture (Locations / Projections), the Kunstsammlung
Nordrhein-Westfalen showcases its holdings of film and video installations. Among the
classics of recent art history found in this continuously growing video collection are works
by Steve McQueen, Shirin Neshat, and Rodney Graham. This selection from the
museum's collection has been supplemented by loaned works by internationally
renowned artists.
The presentation is organized around 12 large-scale pieces which are
seldom on display due to the scale of their projections. With altogether 1100 m2, the
exhibition’s architectural setting, especially designed in collaboration with Stadler Prenn
Architekten (Berlin) for the basement level of the K21 Ständehaus, provides a setting
which does justice to the spatial and physical aspects of these projections. The precise
technical specifications provided by the artists shift these installations – which genuinely
exist only in the form of concrete presentations – into proximity with “performance art”
media such as dance, theater, and music.
The Big Picture is the title of a work by recently deceased California artist Jason Rhoades
(1965–2006). But in this context, the term “Big picture” also refers to the “large-scale
overview” made possible by the presentation of a large collection. When Rhoades,
working with the precision of a cartographer, effects an ironic reversal by displaying a
large garden on a small flat screen, he provides the upbeat for an exhibition of film and
video installations which highlights the diverse approaches of the cinematographic
installation. The presentation revolves around a selection of 12 installations, half of them
from the permanent collection of the Kunstsammlung, the other half of which are loans.
Shifts of perspective and scale, as well as conceptual leaps, generate a filmic
atmosphere residing somewhere beyond cinema, whose most powerful inventions
include images of journeys, landscapes, and the natural world. “Common to these works,”
explains curator Doris Krystof, “is the possibility of experiencing landscape through film,
and of seeing how artists construct their spaces.”
Among the pioneers of the large-scale installation – a genre which became feasible only
through the availability of high-intensity projectors in the 1990s – represented in the
exhibition is Steve McQueen. His work for documenta Carib ́s Leap/Western Deep (2002)
is configured in two separate rooms: here, the despairing inhabitants of a Caribbean
island leap to their collective deaths from a cliff; there, a view of everyday working life in a
South African gold mine.
Shirin Neshat, an Iranian artist who lives in New York, confronts viewers simultaneously
with four projections set inside a square structure, each of which shows the same woman
covered in a full body veil. This figure is the artist herself, who transfers the significance
of skin, covering, and containment onto the architecture. According to Neshat, this work,
entitled The Shadow Under the Web (1997), shows “the ideological subdivisions of space
which serve to separate the sexes.”
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster narrates her Shortstories (2008) – which consists of three
short films – in the form of a network of documentary, fantasy-based, and
autobiographical elements. Repeatedly, she embarks upon journeys to locations where
films or narratives are produced about the act of journeying itself.
While Steve McQueen’s projections can be seen only at fixed performance times which
are regulated through personnel and automatic guiding systems, Rodney Graham
conceives of the beholder as a self-determined protagonist. In Phonokinetoscope (2001),
a film of a bicycle ride, edited to form an endless loop, corresponds to the rotation of an
LP record. The dropping of the record player's needle triggers the projection, in which
sound and video track remain asynchronous, coinciding in perpetually new combinations:
this offers the possibility of generating “myriads of music videos” (Rodney Graham).
Participating artists
Jason Rhoades, Mark Lewis, Rodney Graham, Shirin Neshat, Dominique Gonzalez-
Foerster, Corinna Schnitt, Natacha Nisic, Kimsooja, Steve McQueen, Thomas Steffl, Paul
Pfeiffer, Richard T. Walker
Exhibition catalogue
Big Picture (Orte/Projektionen). Zwölf kinemtaografische Installationen / Big Picture
(Locations/Projections): Twelve Cinematographic Installations, published by the
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2011. Edited by Doris Krystof and Maria Anna
Bierwirth, with an architectural layout by Thomas Stadler, 132 pages, 99 illustrations, 83
in color, 1 poster in attached paper bag, format: 19.5 x 27 cm, hardcover, Kerber Verlag,
German/English, article no.: 13106 / ISBN 978-3-941773-10-3, 32,80 euros (the museum
and bookstore editions are identical in quality and price.)
Public guided tours
Beginning in April, public guided tours through the exhibition will take place from 3 p.m. to
4 p.m. on Sundays and holidays, as well as on Tuesdays.
Symposium
Taking place on Sunday, June 25, 2011 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in collaboration with the
Ruhr-Universität Bochum will be the symposium The landscape was difficult to describe,
whose topic is the exhibition Big Picture.
Image: Rodney Graham, Phonokinetoscope, 2001, (Detail), Film-Installation, 16-mm-Film, Farbe, Ton, Schallplattenspieler mit Vinylschallplatte, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, © Rodney Graham, 2011
Opening: Friday, March 18, at 7 p.m.
K21 Kunstsammlung
Standehausstrasse 1 - Dusseldorf
Hours: Tuesday through Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays and holidays 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Admissions: Adults 8 euro, reduced 4, kids and students 0,50