calendario eventi  :: 

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22/6/2012

Two exhibitions

Institute of Modern Art - IMA, Brisbane

Douglas Gordon
Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong and Left is Wrong and Right is Right

Scottish artist Douglas Gordon is known for re-presenting appropriated films in ways that comment on their content and materiality. He has detourned, reactivated, amplified, and interrogated films by excerpting, juxtaposing, and superimposing them, by printing them in negative, and by slowing them down.
Gordon's works tend to be structured around dualities, dichotomies, and doppelgangers, exploring dark themes and existential dilemmas: life and death, good and evil, guilt and innocence. In Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong and Left Is Wrong and Right Is Right (1999), he appropriates Whirlpool, a little known 1949 Otto Preminger film. It's a classic noir tale:

Ann Sutton, the wife of a wealthy psychiatrist, suffers from insomnia and kleptomania. David Korvo, a hypnotist, persuades her to undergo his treatment after saving her from being charged with theft. In order to cover up his murder of socialite Theresa Randolph—from whom he had extorted large sums of money before she threatened to expose him—Korvo plans to hypnotise Ann and send her to Randolph's house, where she will be arrested for the crime. Although he had initially and falsely suspected his wife of having an affair with Korvo, Ann's husband comes to believe that Korvo actually committed the murder under the influence of hypnosis, which gave him the strength to leave his hospital bed where he was recovering from an operation (the source of his perfect alibi). The police take Ann to the scene of the crime so that her husband can attempt to reconstruct the event. Realising that incriminating evidence remains there that would reveal him to be the real killer, Korvo once again returns under hypnosis to the house, where he finally succumbs.

Gordon projects two versions of Whirlpool side by side: one the right way around, the other reversed left-to-right. One projection contains all the odd-numbered frames (with camera black taking the place of the missing images); the other, all the even frames. The soundtrack is treated similarly. Each version, in effect, tells only half the story. The work's nauseating stroboscopic flicker suggests the hypnotist's flashing light, as if placing the viewer in Sutton's shoes. It makes the film harder to watch yet mesmerising. With its mirrored imagery, Gordon's dual projection suggests a Rorschach blot or vortex, echoing Preminger's title. Playing upon Whirlpool's themes, Gordon rereads and rewrites his source.

Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong and Left Is Wrong and Right Is Right was commissioned by New York's Dia Center for their 1999 show Double Vision. Douglas Gordon is represented by Gagosian Gallery.

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Fresh Cut 2012

IMA Director Robert Leonard says, 'Fresh Cut is our annual pick of the hot new Queensland artists. We’ve been running the show since 1997. It is always eagerly anticipated and hotly debated. It has become a rite of passage for local artists. The artists go on to bigger and better things. It’s a glimpse of our art future—artists to keep an eye on.' This year's show features work by Sean Barrett, Antoinette J. Citizen, Yavuz Erkan, and David Nixon. It opens on 23 June.

Sean Barrett started off studying commercial studio photography, but jumped ship to 'art' photography. Commercial photography compels us to buy, believe, and behave, and, in his art, Barrett explores and exploits its technical and aesthetic arsenal. In his installation The Gathering, Barrett's beautifully shot and photoshopped portraits, still lifes, and abstractions remain puzzling. They seem out of context, missing the product or point that would normally provide their raison d'etre. The images aren't hung conventionally, but lean against walls or lie on the floor (and on one another) with a contrived sense of abandon. As much as they initially appear efficient, lucid, and pointed, Barrett's deranged images are just the opposite.

Antoinette J. Citizen is thinking about the future. Inspired by the idea that the world will end in 2012 (the end of the Mayan calendar), she programs Google Calendar to rapidly scroll forward, month by month, hoping to find its limit—a new unanticipated end time. By contrast, she slows down the 1960 movie The Time Machine, presenting it as if it had started playing when it was first set (the year 1899) and would only finish in the distant future it imagines (the year 802,701). For Project Alpha, she mocked up a letter from ASIO to Peter Alwast, inviting the Brisbane artist to join the elite who will continue the species in the event of a future cataclysm. Finally, with Courtney Coombs, Citizen harassed the curators of the hip Paris art museum, the Palais de Tokyo, sending them a new proposal every fortnight, until asked to cease and desist. Optimistically, the duo proposed multiple future works that would not take place.

For his Unorthodox Aphorisms, Yavuz Erkan photographed himself enjoying odd sensual experiences: he holds a handful of jelly, sugar is spread across his back, he wears a bra cup across his face as a breathing mask, he looks down the front of his pants, he blows a giant bubblegum bubble. Erkan leads by example; his brightly lit studies in polymorphous perversity instruct us in possibilities for our own pleasure. He explains: 'I invite the viewers to distance themselves from their conventional routines. These photographs are visual aphorisms targeted at the conformism of individuals who live what is considered a normal life.'

David Nixon creates abstractions from banal everyday things. In his video

Immanence

, white specks swill about against a black background, recalling Len Lye's classic experimental film

Particles in Space

. The specks suggest snowflakes, the 'snow' of analogue TV static, and swarming fireflies. In fact, they are polystyrene bean-bag 'beans' flying through the air. This visual is accompanied by a haunting soundtrack featuring children's playground chatter, encouraging us to imagine that the luminous specks are alive. Alongside the video, Nixon's sublime abstract photographs turn out to be images of fluttering, torn plastic bags

Image: Yavuz Erkan, Bubble Gum, 2011

Institute of Modern Art
at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
420 Brunswick Street / PO Box 2176
Fortitude Valley - Brisbane QLD 4006
Gallery Hours
Tuesday–Saturday 11am–5pm
Open Late Thursday until 8pm
We are closed to the public during exhibition changeovers, on public holidays, the full Easter weekend, and over the Christmas/New Year break.

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