Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video

Miami Art Central, June 29-September 11, 2005

Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video, is an international survey featuring video work by artists from over 20 countries.  This exhibition brings together recent works that are structured around a single situation, action or individual and often reinterprets the process-oriented concerns of performance and conceptual art from the 1970s, while exploring an expanded social and psychological landscape.

While a number of videos in this show reflect on political and cultural situations in different parts of the world, what ultimately unites these diverse works is their ability to draw complex meanings from singular situations and actions.  They make the case that even the simplest gestures and moments can generate an irreducible aesthetics experience.  These “short form videos” are distinguished not simply by their brief running times, but above all their formal and conceptual concision. 

Some of the work is staged or occurs in controlled studio situations. Devoid of sound, Aernout Mik’s Park(2002), for example, draws the viewer in much like a traditional painting, presenting a wooded park filled with people who remain disconnected from one another as they engage in both ordinary and mysterious activities.  Other works feature interventions in the flow of everyday life.  Kimsooja’s A Homeless Woman – Cairo (2001) - a mixture of video, performance and sculpture (involving the artist’s own body) - explores the uneasy relationship between the individual and mass society and the dislocation of being a foreigner engulfed by another culture.  Lying on her side on a street in Cairo while surrounded by staring men and boys, who respond to her presence in various ways, the artist becomes a female “other” confounding the onlookers.

Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video crosses a wide range of themes, moods and situations.  The scope of the exhibition’s subjects includes the body, landscape, video relationship to painting, drawing and performance, the intersection of language and vision as well as social and political issues around the globe.  In their diversity, the works presented offer an illuminating and provocative look at a vein of international video production that has become increasingly significant over the past decade.  

ARTISTS

Featured artists in Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video include Dan Acostioaei (Romania) and Ann Wodinski (Belgium), Mauricio Alejo (Mexico), Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Puerto Rico), Douglas Gordon (Scotland), David Hammons (USA), Kimsooja (Korea), Glenda Leon (Cuba), Mark Lewis (Canada), Mads Lynnerup (USA/Denmark), Euan Macdonald (USA/Canada), Aernout Mik (Holland), Will Rogan (USA), Aïda Ruilova (USA), Anri Sala (Albania), Song Dong (China), Su-Mei Tse (Luxembourg), Gillian Wearing (England), Wood & Harrison (England), David Zink Yi (Peru / Germany ), Artur Zmijewski (Poland), Yael Bartana (Israel), Jesper Alvear (Denmark / Czech Republic), and Mircea Cantor (Romania).  Some additional new videos have been included in MAC’s presentation of this exhibition, such as works by Lida Abdul (Afghanistan), Dara Friedman (Germany/USA), Adrian Paci (Albania), Francis Alys (Belgium/Mexico), Robin Rhode (South Africa/Germany) and Eva Koch (Denmark).

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Irreducible: Contemporary Short Form Video was organized by the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.  The show was curated by Curator and Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ralph Rugoff. Miami Art Central’s presentation of this exhibition was coordinated by Rina Carvajal, MAC Executive Director and Chief Curator. The exhibition is sponsored by the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation.