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 Making Time: Considering Time as a Material in Contemporary Video & Film Exhibition at the UCLA Hammer Museum February 4 – April 29, 2001 See exhibition portfolio "Making Time: Considering Time as a Material in Contemporary Video & Film,” curated by Amy Cappellazzo for the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, is on view at the Hammer from February 4 through April 29, 2001. The exhibition is an exploration into the way artists working in video and film manipulate or reconfigure time to gain insight and meaning in a work of art. “Making Time” also examines the work of artists who use their consciousness of time – whether accelerated or dilated – as a material and, in some cases, as subject matter. From single-channel video works of the 1960s and 70s to digitally enhanced video projection, the works in this exhibition probe standard concepts of linear time. Many contemporary works, such as Rodney Graham’s Halcion Sleep (1994), a 26-minute continuous loop of the artist asleep in the back of a car, interpret the complexities of “real” time in an age of constantly-moving images, and cutting-edge technology. The first thing visitors encounter upon entering the exhibition is Andy Warhol’s 8-hour, 16-millimeter film, Empire, 1967, documenting the Empire State Building. Nearby will be Douglas Gordon’s Bootleg (Empire), 1997, a color video recording gallery visitors in a contemporary setting watching Warhol’s black and white historical masterpiece. “A video show should be like a major arcade, with a stream of experiences and images constantly coming at you. We’re competing with so much these days, with movie theaters and home videos. This exhibition examines how a conventional museum setting – a white modernist box – needs to be reconfigured to accommodate the needs of film and video,” says Cappellazzo. The “Making Time” exhibition is designed by architecture and design firm LOT/EK. LOT/EK (pronounced “low tech”) partners Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano are graduates of the School of Architecture of the l’Universita di Napoli and completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University. LOT/EK’s constructions, architecture, and installations transform conventional functions of a space into new solutions for living, working and playing. “Our approach for the exhibition was to ask fundamental questions: ‘How do we look at moving images? How do we inhabit a projection space?’ With “Making Time," technology becomes architecture,” says Lignano. Tolla and Lignano are known for their use of prefabricated objects of rubber, foam and steel. The slash in their name suggests the cutting the firm does to most of those industrial objects to make them fit into new environments. Discussing their work in “Metropolis” magazine, Tolla says, “Our vision, our obsession, is to explore what happens when you combine an older object with cutting-edge technology.” LOT/EK’s design features a large steel structure. On one side are pyramid-shaped cases housing projectors and cones of light that transmit images on the walls of a series of cocoon-like projection rooms lined with foam-rubber walls and benches. On the other side, arm-like extensions hold a row of video monitors reaching out toward a cushioned vinyl wall that slants to encourage visitors to lean back and watch the show. The futuristic environment is bathed throughout in ambient blue lighting to enhance the glow from the video monitors. Visitors move through the exhibition by following a taped fluorescent orange trail on the floor. Curator Cappellazzo writes, “What light is to painting, time is to video and film. ‘Making Time’ is an exploration into the way artists working in video and film manipulate or reconfigure time. Time, after all, is a universal language, yet it is perhaps the least commonly understood. The artists in “Making Time” explore this infinitely interesting territory with a broad range of results.” “Making Time” features 32 works by twenty-eight artists: Vito Acconci, Darren Almond, Francis Alÿs, Alex Bag, John Baldessari, Lynda Benglis, Andrea Bowers, Fischli/Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Dara Friedman, Gilbert & George, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Lucy Gunning, Gary Hill, José Antonio Hernández-Diez, Jonathan Horowitz, Shigeko Kubota, David Lamelas, Stephen Murphy, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Peter Sarkisian, Steina, Sam Taylor-Wood, Diana Thater, Type A and Andy Warhol. A catalogue, edited by Cappellazzo and published by PB/ICA in conjunction with Distributed Arts Press (D.A.P.), accompanies the exhibition. The publication features color plates throughout and essays written by UCLA film and video historian Peter Wollen; Adriano Pedrosa, associate curator for the Sao Paulo Bienal in 1998 and 2000; and Cappellazzo. Please note the following festival, also on the subject of digital art: Art in Motion II Feb. 15, 16, 17, 2001 Art in Motion (AIM) is a three-day festival, free to the public, and addressing the notion of “The Vanishing Author?” It will take place simultaneously at the University of Southern California, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. This international festival will bring together the most innovative projects currently being generated by the dynamic field of digital media. Janet Owen, Festival Director (213) 740-ARTS http://www.usc.edu/aim Return to Making Time |
