Catherine Sullivan, Triangle of Need, 2007, Production still from multichannel video installation Courtesy the artist, Galerie Catherine Bastide, and Metro Pictures Gallery.

Walker Art Center
1750 Hennepin Ave.
Minneapolis
612-375-7600
Catherine Sullivan, Triangle of Need
August 23-November 18

What do Neanderthals have in common with early 20th-century American industrialist? What are the connections between Nigerian cinema and a sprawling mansion comprising four centuries of architectural styles? These are some of the elements — physical and conceptual — that make up Catherine Sullivan’s film project making its world premiere August 23 through November 18 in the exhibition Catherine Sullivan: Triangle of Need. In the multichannel video installation, Sullivan orchestrates complex sets of ideas and participants to weave a nuanced story about evolution, class, wealth and poverty, and the inequalities and injustices in our global economy. The project is co-commissioned by the Walker, A Foundation (Liverpool), and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens (Miami), and was presented in Liverpool (October 2007) and Miami (December 2007). The Minneapolis presentation is organized by Walker visual arts curator Doryun Chong.

A 2007 artist-in-residence at the Walker, Sullivan was trained in both visual and performing arts, and the works she creates are truly hybrid, freely crossing boundaries and mixing disciplines. She has explored different theatrical and performative conventions, from the popular stage play and musical to the historical drama, from postmodern dance to Fluxus performance. In Triangle of Need, these intersections are abundantly evident.

The story in Sullivan’s video installation unfolds in two main locations: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami and a nondescript apartment in “an American city.” Vizcaya is the former estate of American industrialist James Deering, vice president and heir to the agricultural trust International Harvester. He built Vizcaya in the 1910s on the Bay of Biscayne, and the interior and exterior decors of the estate span architectural history, from Renaissance to baroque rococo to neoclassical, as if generations of a family lived there continuously. If Miami was the locus of Deering’s historical fantasies and architectures of leisure, Chicago, the home of his factory, was the location of his industrial production and labor mobilization. In these two starkly contrasting sites, Sullivan situates what she calls “vestigial narratives,” one involving a wealthy industrialist trying to force the last remaining members of a hominid species to reproduce, and the second, a series of reconstructions of scenes from the catalogue of Pathescope Films, the company from which Deering ordered silent film reels for screening at Vizcaya.

During Sullivan's Minneapolis residency, she partnered with choreographer Dylan Skybrook and dancers Justin Jones and Kristin Van Loon to develop specific movements of the imagined species, which were based on research on Neanderthal physiognomy. Furthering exploration of the body’s ability to extend beyond its erect orientation and bipedal movement, Sullivan also engaged Minneapolis figure skater Rohene Ward, with whom she designed and filmed a series of spins. Concurrently, Sean Griffin, a Los Angeles–based composer and the artist’s frequent collaborator, invented a complex performative language called Mousterian taken from theories of Neanderthal speech. For this work, he also created a score for 11 instruments, combining scientific reconstructions of various sources (prehistoric flutes, early analog electronics) with early 20th-century American parlor music and sacred music by 17th-century composer Joachim Neander, after whom the Neanderthal is named.

Also collaborating on the project is Nigerian actor/director Kunle Afolayan, who provides a counterpoint to Sullivan’s direction and style with his commercially based practice. Sullivan’s and Afolayan’s footage of the same script is intercut and interspersed, creating a structure that questions its own operation. Sullivan describes her approach as “agitating the content from within” the cinematic structure she has set up. Triangle of Need — her most ambitious project to date — promises to give viewers a series of immersive and stimulating image and sound environments. But at the same time, this complex technique of narration is, to borrow the artist’s words again, a willfully “imperfect apparatus” for understanding the world and its historical and social contingencies.

Catherine Sullivan, Triangle of Need, 2007, Production still from multichannel video installation Courtesy the artist, Galerie Catherine Bastide, and Metro Pictures Gallery.

Catherine Sullivan, Big Hunt, 2002, 16 mm film transferred to video, 5 DVDs, Approx. 22 minutes each, Edition 4.

Catherine Sullivan, Triangle of Need, 2007, Installation view.

Catherine Sullivan, Big Hunt, 2002, 16 mm film transferred to video, 5 DVDs, Approx. 22 minutes each, Edition 4.

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York
212-206-7100
Catherine Sullivan,
Triangle of Need
February 7-March 15, 2008

Nigerian e-mail scams, figure skating and a Neanderthal language all play a part in Catherine Sullivan’s new video work Triangle of Need. The multi-channel installation continues her exploration of theatrical and performative conventions.

Sullivan’s ambitious project focuses on two main locations: Vizcaya, the sprawling Miami estate built in the 1910’s by agricultural industrialist James Deering, and a nondescript apartment building in an anonymous American city. Sullivan situates “vestigial narratives” at these locations, one involving a hominid species that is forced to reproduce by an industrialist; and a series of reconstructions from the Pathescope Films catalog, silent films screened by Deering at Vizcaya.

As in past projects, Sullivan works with numerous collaborators. Triangle of Need enlists the expertise of Nigerian director Kunle Afolaya, composer Sean Griffin, choreographer Dylan Skybrook and figure skater Rohene Ward, among others.

Sullivan’s videos and performances have been presented in solo shows at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 2007; Tate Modern, London, 2005; Secession, Vienna, 2005, Kunsthalle Zurich, 2005; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 2004; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 2003; Fri-Art Centre d' Art Contemporain, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2003; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2002; and Renaissance Society, Chicago, 2002. She has been in group shows including Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, 2003, and Whitney Biennial, 2004. Sullivan originally trained as an actor at California Institute of Arts, where she received a BFA in 1992. She completed her MFA at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1997. She received a DAAD grant (2004-2005) and spent a year living in Berlin. She lives and works in Chicago where she teaches at University of Chicago. This is her third show with Metro Pictures.

Catherine Sullivan, D-Pattern (with score by Sean Griffin), 2004, Two-channel video projection, color, sound, 8 minute loop, Edition of 6.