T.V. Santhosh, Counting Down, 2008, 30 fiberglass dogs, steel, LED counters, LED strips, paint, Dimensions variable, On loan from the Frank Cohen collection.

Lisa Oppenheim, The Sun is Always Setting Somewhere Else, 2006 (looped slide projection, dimensions variable), image courtesy Store Gallery, London.

Malcolm McLaren, Still from video Shallow, Courtesy of artist.

Julian Rosefeldt, The Perfectionist (Trilogy of Failure / Part III), 2005 3-channel film installation filmed on Super-16mm transferred onto DVD 16:9 loop 25 min 18 sec.

Royal Academy of Arts
Burlington House
Piccadilly
020 7300 8000
London
GSK Contemporary
A multidisciplinary season of cutting-edge visual culture at the Royal Academy of Arts
Part I: Molten States
October 11-
December 4, 2008
Part II: Collision Course
December 16, 2008-
January 19, 2009

Opening the season in the first floor galleries is the multi-media exhibition Molten States. Exploring the links between art and performance, it features work from four international artists known for their focus on film, theatre and narrative — Olaf Nicolai, René Pollesch, Julian Rosefeldt and Catherine Sullivan.

Olaf Nicolai presents a newly commissioned installation Samani. Some Proposals to Answer Important Questions 2008 and René Pollesch (in collaboration with Bert Neumann and Ute Schall) will stage a performance of: Tod Eines Praktikanten (Death of a Trainee). Julian Rosefeldt will show the trilogy, featuring Stunned Man, The Perfectionist, and The Soundmaker. US film and video artist Catherine Sullivan’s recently commissioned work Triangle of Need, a multi-faceted combination of 16 mm film, video projection and monitors will be shown in London for the first time.

The second part of the season, Collision Course, reflects the winter timings of the programming with a bleak and austere aesthetic underlying the three main exhibitions; Burroughs Live, Sudden White, and Dark Materials, as well as the accompanying programme of talks and cinema screenings. On entering the main upstairs galleries, visitors will be greeted by a vast snowscape painting of a post-apocalyptic London, which covers the entrance to the exhibition of artists’ film and video, Sudden White, curated by Mark Beasley. Film and video works from artists including Bruce Conner, Cyprien Gaillard, Ryan Gander, Jonathan Horowitz, Tracey Moffat, John Russell, Robert Smithson, Javier Tellez, Guido van de Werve and Linda Weiss will be presented on a series of screens, lightboxes and monitors.

Upstairs, Burroughs Live, co-curated by Burroughs expert José Férez and David Thorp, aims to establish the presence of American novelist, film maker, social critic, painter and spoken word performer, William Burroughs. The show presents footage of Burroughs’ own performances and films including Thanksgiving Prayer and Towers Open Fire and previously unseen footage. A series of photographic self-portraits will be exhibited alongside works produced in collaboration with other artists such as George Condo and Keith Haring, as well as portraits by Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibowtiz, David Hockney and Damien Hirst.

A new film work from artist Malcolm McLaren, Shallow; will be shown alongside Burroughs Live. The 21 ‘film portraits’ that make up the work were inspired by Burroughs’ Cut Up technique.

Dark Materials, draws together recently acquired works from the Frank Cohen Collection which evoke the sense of the aftermath of destruction, from Banks Violette’s burnt out framework of a church, to Indian artist T.V Santhosh’s installation , in which digital timers count down the final moments to catastrophic disaster. The exhibition culminates with a room of ‘skeletal’ sculptures from Asian artists Hyunkoo Lee, Sudarshan Shetty and Jitish Kallat.