Catherine Bastide, Brussels | Metro Pictures, New York

The Chittendens : Catherine Sullivan

The Chittendens is a new six-channel video by Catherine Sullivan. Using a score by composer Sean Griffin, Sullivan assigned different "attitudes" to 16 actors. The attitudes are interpreted by the actors according to strict schemes. Performing rhythmically in different patterns and random combinations, the actors may vary the intensity of their performance, condense or expand the attitude's physical form, and abbreviate or extend its length.

Arndt & Partner Zurich

Charles Sandison : The Blind Watchmaker

The installations created by the Scottish artist Charles Sandison immerse the beholder into a fascinating synthetic world made up of projected words and signs floating across the room. In the dark, they silently wander across the architecture and the beholder as shining dots of light, sometimes in a hurry, sometimes at a slow pace, sometimes isolated and then, again, in dense swarms. At first sight, the caleidoscopic movements of the light signs seem to be arbitrary. After some time, however, they either densify to form figurative silhouettes embedded in a sort of narration apparently inspired by the Poésie Concrète, or they reveal a choreography that reminds of biological or civilizational systems being translated into a digital simulation

Cristina Guerra, Lisbon

MIGUEL PALMA : PROJECTO ARIETE

Between May 20 and June 18 of 2005, artist Miguel Palma (b. Lisbon, 1964) covered 16 000 km throughout Europe in a Porsche Carrera 911. During this period of less than 30 days, he visited 43 museums and contemporary art venues in a campaign to promote his work. Miguel Palma’s show at Cristina Guerra Contemporary wraps up “Projecto Ariete” in a summation of the experience: the car, cockpit, uniform, sound track, sponsors, merchandising and documentation, two videos and several photographs taken along the journey.

Jack the Pelican, Brooklyn

Tim Folland - Death-defying Dervish Gangbuster Rebel
Nell Stewart - To The Trees

The art-destroying stuntman hijinks of Tim Folland spring from the cartoon antics of Wile E. Coyote. At the center of his video installation, “Death-defying Dervish Gangbuster Rebel” is the stupendously resourceful, maniacal idiot Goldhead, who, in his oversized helmet mask with hooked little nose, bears a striking resemblance to Richard Nixon.

Jack the Pelican is delighted to premier Nell Stewart’s hypnotic feminist masterpiece, To the Trees (DVD, 16 minutes). A former dancer with the Houston Ballet, performance artist and commercial actress, known for her role as the Blood Countess Bathory, among others, Stewart freshly plunges into the medium of video with disciplined abandon.

Galerie Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam

NUMMER VIER : Guido van der Werve

"As a whole, the use of music is more reminiscent of the use of classical sounds by original film directors, as Stanley Kubrick has space ships float through outer space to unexpected waltz sounds in 2001: A space Odyssey’. Van der Werve’s films are miniatures, not only due to their brief temporal span, but also because they suggest a world of smaller dimensions than our usual surroundings. It is a surreal, displaced reality, in which the usual physical and psychic laws do not seem to apply. The dream-character of his scenarios, however, dispenses with any hallucinatory opulence. No drug-induced, intensified state of perception lies at its basis, but more sober, distanced view and the bizarreness and the little traps set in everyday life, as found in Rene Magritte.”

Ludwig Seyfarth on Guido van der Werve

TANIA MOURAUD: OR DONC

Tania MOURAUD presents her personal exhibition OR DONC from January 14 to February 28 at Dominique Fiat Gallery, Paris. The works proposed by the artist open up a field for thought on our undertaking and our position in the world facing real questions.
Tania Mouraud orcherstrates visual and aural perception, in a sensitivity founded on touches of rythmic tonality, thus sculpting the visual space. She developps a specific grammar in the shooting and in the editing of her videos, thus playing with various frames as many markers and stands to take.

stills from Hito Steyerl, November 2004, 25 mins

Wilkinson Gallery, London

A Picture of War is Not War

Kamal Aljafarii, Maja Bajevic, David Maljkovi, Renzo Martens, Hito Steyer,Akram Zaatari

This film and video programme includes works in which the artist uses as a starting point a reflection on some area of recent history, both personal and/or political. Using mainly the documentary style, the works question the way that history is mediated or misunderstood. Some offer an alternative structure to look at acts of violence or memories of war and others examine the creation of myth associated with political circumstances.

Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles

THE LATEST FICTION : B & T, Brian Bress, Kelly Sears, Isabell Spengler

Cirrus is pleased to present The Latest Fiction an exhibition of new video and photography from emerging artists in Berlin and Los Angeles. Approaching video in distinct and divergent practices, these four artists extrapolate on the conventions of the medium and investigate its possibilities.

Image : Continuing their investigation of performance for video, B&T enter a new arena where flash photography, air horns, and undulating spectator excitement are encouraged. They’re finally defending themselves with everything they’ve got, while offending each other in the process.  

B&T, Ultimate Champion, 2006, DVD 6:20 min