Anthony Gross
dal 5/7/2011 al 30/7/2011
Segnalato da
5/7/2011
Anthony Gross
The Agency Gallery, London
Burnt Wood Stories. New and recent pieces in sound and video are presented via a number of 'Scenarios', styled workstations of equipment that explore the moving image and its soundtrack: scripts, still photos, film props and found narratives burnt with lasers onto large wooden panels.
SPINNING NEWSPAPER!
..."China has ordered TV stations across the country not to air detective shows, spy thrillers or dramas about time-travel for the next three months"...
- in preparation for the 90th Communist Party Celebrations 1st July 2011 - BBC News online, 6 May 2011, at 13:55.
The Agency is pleased to present Burnt Wood Stories, a solo exhibition of mixed-media works by artist Anthony Gross.
New and recent pieces in sound and video are presented via a number of 'Scenarios', styled workstations of equipment that explore the moving image and its soundtrack. Setting an overall tone of dystopian multiple futures, the Scenarios form installations interspersed by scripts, still photos, film props and found narratives burnt with lasers onto large wooden panels.
Foraging for original materials during his time in China, Gross shipped back to London a suitcase of cheaply printed 1980's comic books. Measuring only 13x9cm, these books are a mix of illustrated Chinese fairy tale and Western action genres. The stories, from spy thriller, to gangster takeover to evil scientist domination, are all drawn in styles combining traditional Oriental decoration together with approximations of Western motifs. Gross made an archive of images, producing categories and favourites, re-translating them to generate his own visual narratives for new film works. This process resulted in the film commission KANE'S Revolutions, 2011, a near-feature melding comic strip stills, live action and computer game-style rendering. Seamlessly linking past present and future, the film casts absurdist, culturally generic characters, artists and actors, into an intuitive collage of digital scenes.
The workstations emphasise a process-based approach to film-making. Gross demystifies the film narrative process whilst at the same time creating potential fictional environments for as yet unrealised films, early scenes of which the artist will present alongside finished works and scripts. These new rushes of street scenes in Detroit, one of the great symbols for capitalist urban dystopia, which Gross has filmed with two actor agents, represent the importance of investigation both as methodology for a new film and as analysis of past works. The meta-structure underpinning becomes a work in itself, allowing the artist to become a potential fictional character in these merged parallel worlds.
Leaning on conceptual strategies from the 1970s and the visual style surfing of the current technological age, Anthony Gross presents an exhibition as enquiry, and establishes the gallery as a functional space where the audience becomes the unwitting participant and potential maker of the work. This open-source sharing of the tools for authorship is a democratic gesture, which in turn empowers the artist ‘s individual digital language.
For the exhibition Gross has worked with pianist Joao Lima Duque to produce a unique soundtrack pressed on vinyl. The exhibition is accompanied by a specially produced publication with texts and drawings by the artist, and with commissioned writings by Amanda Beech, David Burrows, and Rosie Cooper.
Anthony Gross (b1968) lives and works in London. He has shown internationally including Pratt Manhattan, MOCA Shanghai, The Guangzhou Triennale, and The Sharjah Biennale. Selected solo shows include 'Crimes Scenes', Superfront LA, 2010, 'Testbed 1', Beaconsfield, London (residency & film commission), 2010, 'Retrogeno', ICA bar commission, 2007, 'Platform for Art', Piccadilly Circus, London (public commission), 2004, 'Object Passing', The Economist Building, London (commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Society), 2004. Anthony Gross co-curated 'Event Horizon' at GSK, The Royal Academy, 2008, is director of The Old Police Station, co-director of temporarycontemporary and Cartel.
Image: Burnt Wood Stories (Scenario) installation detail, vintage turntable, headphones, pyrography, polished metal. Copyright Anthony Gross 2011.
Preview Wednesday, 6th July, 6-9pm
The Agency Gallery
15 A Cremer Street - London
Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat 10.30am-6pm