Seoungho Cho, I Left My Silent House, 09:30, Color, Stereo, US, 2007.
Ernie Gehr, Side / Walk / Shuttle, 1991.
Lu Chunsheng, Before the Appearance of the First Steam Engine.
Lu Chunsheng, Before the Appearance of the First Steam Engine.
Ken Kobland, still from Ideas of Order in Cinque Terre, 2005. |
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The Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
816-751-1278
Kansas City
Atkins Auditorium
Electromediascope
Shifting Frames
of Reference
February 12-26, 2010
Electromediascope, the award-winning popular series at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, is an international survey of contemporary film, video and new media. For its winter series, February 2010, Electromediascope offers three programs of film and videos called Shifting Frames of Reference, presenting works by four artists: Ken Kobland (USA), Seoungho Cho (South Korea), Lu Chunsheng (China), and Ernie Gehr (USA).
“Lu Chunsheng and Seoungho Cho’s video works examine and call into question local experiences that ultimately have to do with how we know and re-imagine the world. Ken Kobland and Ernie Gehr explore beauty and the pleasure of shifting visual perceptions of places that have been constructed and inhabited over time,” said Patrick Clancy, professor and chair, Photography and Digital Filmmaking, at the Kansas City Art Institute. Clancy, with artist Gwen Widmer, is co-curator of Electromediascope. They were honored this year by the KC FilmFest with an award for the series, which began in 1993. At the Nelson-Atkins, they work with Jan Schall, Sanders Sosland Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art, and Leesa Fanning, Associate Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art.
A particularly salient aspect of Lu Chunsheng's work is the way it breaches the boundary between documentary and fiction. His conceptual and methodological coherence broaden and extend the inquiry into everyday life rather than merely illustrate it. Having graduated from the Department of Sculpture at the China National Academy of Fine Arts, Lu Chunsheng is now focusing on photography and video art. In his work he articulates a surrealistic and neutral attitude in his videos. Using fixed camera positions, endless drawn-out shots and unprofessional shooting techniques, he documents human behavior in bizarre situations. But unlike many of his fellow artist emerging from the same generation he does not focus on the estrangement following an accelerated urbanization (including its stream of rapidly moving images and perplexed inhabitants). Instead, he has developed an oeuvre where the characters depicted — either photographically or on video — find themselves in undoubtedly weird situations.
According to Electronic Arts Intermix, the video works of Korean artist Seoungho Cho are distinguished by a lyrical confluence of complex image processing and sound collage. His works are formalist, almost painterly explorations of subjectivity and the subconscious. These poetic meditations often focus on isolation and estrangement in relation to culture and landscape.
Ken Kobland has been working in various aspects of film and video since 1971, creating productions in collaboration with performing artists such as Philip Glass, the Wooster Group, Elizabeth LeCompte, and Spalding Gray. His work explores a variety of themes and issues, often embracing a photographic aesthetic within the context of video. Beautifully edited, his work merges diaristic and documentary categories, presenting an art of video that approximates photo-journalism. He is a recipient of the 1986 Berlin Artist in Residence Fellowship (DAAD) and has received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. – Video Data Bank
Ernie Gehr (born 1943) is an American experimental filmmaker closely associated with the Structural film movement of the 1970s. A self-taught artist, Gehr was inspired to begin making films in the 1960s after chancing upon a screening of a Stan Brakhage film. Gehr's film Serene Velocity (1970) has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Gehr served as faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Films featured are shown in Atkins Auditorium at the Museum. Admission is free. Reservations are recommended. All starting times are 7 p.m.:
• February 12
Ideas of Order in Cinque Terre, by Kobland;
Horizontal Silence, by Cho;
ws.2, by Cho;
I Left My Silent House, by Cho;
Before the Appearance of the First Steam Engine, by Chunsheng.
• February 19
Precarious Garden, by Gehr;
The Curve Which Can Cough, by Chunsheng;
The Square Loaded with Nuclear Power Is Going to America, Chunsheng;
History of Chemistry 1, Chunsheng;
The First Man Who Bought a Juicer Bought It Not for Drinking Juice, Chunsheng.
• February 26
History of Chemistry 2 – Excessively Restrained Mountaineering Enthusiasts, by Chunsheng. |
