Rodney Graham at the Madison Art Center
This compact survey of five recent films and Halcion Sleep, a 1994 video, explores in depth one aspect of Rodney Graham’s artistic practice. For the past fifteen years, Graham has created films, videos, photographs, music compositions and recordings, installations, and books to explore the limits of visual perception. He often does this by drawing attention to the passage of time: the flash of the bulb central to a series of 1970s Polaroids, the extension and deferral involved in his book projects from the early 1990s, or the repetition central to the film work on display in this exhibition.
Vexation Island (1997), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999), and City Self/Country Self (2000) constitute a trilogy: each is a meticulously produced short film that seamlessly loops a simple ‘costume vignette’. A Robinson Crusoe type, a lonely cowboy, and an urban dandy-all played by Graham himself-are doomed respectively to repeat senseless self-destructive acts, escapes, and cruelties. Set in idealized, fairytale-like surroundings, each invokes a haze of references that belies Graham’s wide reading (and poaching): the myth of Sisyphus, several Freud essays, spaghetti Westerns, and Dickens tales all come to mind. Despite their brevity (the longest is nine minutes), each film’s editing emphasizes a dramatic build-up. By the critical moment-when Graham gets knocked in the head by a coconut, sings a lonesome tune, or kicks himself in the pants-the viewer is so content to be relieved of this tension that she barely notices the loop. And it begins again…
Set in Berlin’s pastoral Tiergarten, The Photokinetoscope (2001) benefits from being seen in the context of these three earlier films. It too is a short loop, an immaculately rendered meditation on altered consciousness. Retracing Albert Hoffman’s acid-tinged bicycle ride, Graham pedals through the park, his senses heightened as he stares at statues and ponders a clothespin and playing card. Married to but not necessarily synchronized with a soundtrack written and performed by the artist, the film neatly inverts the premise of Halcion Sleep. In that work, he rides in a car, unconscious, from the edge of Vancouver to his home. In The Photokinetoscope, hyper-aware of all that surrounds him, Graham merges disparate techniques, materials, and sources to create a precise work that is closed in on itself. Yet, through myriad links to Pink Floyd, science, the history of drugs, and his own earlier work, the film opens out onto the world.
Vexation Island (1997), How I Became a Ramblin' Man (1999), and City Self/Country Self (2000) constitute a trilogy: each is a meticulously produced short film that seamlessly loops a simple ‘costume vignette’. A Robinson Crusoe type, a lonely cowboy, and an urban dandy-all played by Graham himself-are doomed respectively to repeat senseless self-destructive acts, escapes, and cruelties. Set in idealized, fairytale-like surroundings, each invokes a haze of references that belies Graham’s wide reading (and poaching): the myth of Sisyphus, several Freud essays, spaghetti Westerns, and Dickens tales all come to mind. Despite their brevity (the longest is nine minutes), each film’s editing emphasizes a dramatic build-up. By the critical moment-when Graham gets knocked in the head by a coconut, sings a lonesome tune, or kicks himself in the pants-the viewer is so content to be relieved of this tension that she barely notices the loop. And it begins again…
Set in Berlin’s pastoral Tiergarten, The Photokinetoscope (2001) benefits from being seen in the context of these three earlier films. It too is a short loop, an immaculately rendered meditation on altered consciousness. Retracing Albert Hoffman’s acid-tinged bicycle ride, Graham pedals through the park, his senses heightened as he stares at statues and ponders a clothespin and playing card. Married to but not necessarily synchronized with a soundtrack written and performed by the artist, the film neatly inverts the premise of Halcion Sleep. In that work, he rides in a car, unconscious, from the edge of Vancouver to his home. In The Photokinetoscope, hyper-aware of all that surrounds him, Graham merges disparate techniques, materials, and sources to create a precise work that is closed in on itself. Yet, through myriad links to Pink Floyd, science, the history of drugs, and his own earlier work, the film opens out onto the world.