Frontier-Linear

2009 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

Doug Aitken

year born: 1968
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Redondo Beach, California

The version of Frontier acquired by the Kadist Collection consists of a single-channel video, adapted from the monumental installation and performance that Aitken presented in Rome, by the Tiber River, in 2009. In this film, Aiken’s allusion to “the frontier” and iconic imagery like the cowboy suggest that the American West Coast as a cultural construction. These notions are reinforced by two key elements in the film: its protagonist, the iconic West Coast artist Ed Ruscha, and its reference to the cinematic and the experience of the movie theater. The film is structured as a journey in time, from day to night. The completed film was shot in different places around the globe, including Los Angeles, Rome, South Africa, and Israel, which suggests the blurring boundaries of the unknown and emphasizes both fictive and real landscapes.


Doug Aitken’s work started to draw international attention when his installation Electric Earth earned the International Prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale, which was organized by renowned Swiss curator Harald Szeemann. Interested in breaking conventional narratives, Aitken emphasizes circularity and non-linearity in his monumental site-specific installations. This monumentality is usually expressed in Aitken’s tendency to combine apparently disconnected fragments in order to create epic films. Although this aspect of his work differs from the all-encompassing wholes sought by modernism, Aitken’s films play with the imaginary and surreal in a way that flirts with the notion of utopia. The artist uses pop culture and, especially, the film industry as sources for his compelling and immersive environments. Aesthetic elements such as coloration, light and space and a careful editing process give his films a contemplative mood.


Colors:



Absentia
© » KADIST

Tony Oursler

2012

Continuing Oursler’s broader exploration of the moving image, Absentia is one of three micro-scale installations that incorporate small objects and tiny video projections within a miniature active proscenium...

Hydroforce
© » KADIST

Liz Cohen

2011

From among a cloud of fake smoke we see a heavily pregnant Cohen wearing a bikini and golden stilettos with lace-up straps wrapped around her legs, grasping onto the frame of a modified car as its loud hydraulic system clumsily moves it up and down...

The Making of Monster
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

1996

In Monster (1996-97), the artist’s face becomes grotesque through the application of strips of transparent adhesive tape, typical of Gordon’s performance-based films that often depict his own body in action...

27 Punk Photos: 11. Dim Wanker: F Word, May, 1978
© » KADIST

Bruce Conner

1978

In 1977, as an already-established artist best known for his films, Bruce Conner began to photograph punk rock shows at Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco club and music venue...

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Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1)
© » KADIST

Cerith Wyn Evans

2008

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

PANGKIS
© » KADIST

Yee I-Lann

2021

PANGKIS by Yee I-Lann is a looped video performance...

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Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1)
© » KADIST

Cerith Wyn Evans

2008

Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura
© » KADIST

Rodney Graham

1996

Tree on the Former Site of Camera Obscura (1996) belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that lives in Northern California...

Chu’u Mayaa
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2017

Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...

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Leading Collector of Middle Eastern Art to Sell Dozens of Works at Sotheby’s - via ARTnews
© » LARRY'S LIST

Abdulrahman Al Zayani is selling more than 80 works by Middle East artists....

The Power of a Poem
© » ARTS EQUATOR

The Power of a Poem | ArtsEquator Skip to content Zakir Hossain, a celebrated poet and migrant worker in Singapore, wrote a poem, which sparked a response from the state...

Sharon Lockhart: Rudzienko
© » KADIST

KADIST co-presents Sharon Lockhart’s Rudzienko , a film produced by KADIST in conjunction with the 2014 Liverpool Biennal...

Liu Wei: China’s Trickster Mixer-Upper
© » ARTNEWS CN

Liu Wei: China’s Trickster Mixer-Upper – ARTnews.com Skip to main content By Barbara Pollack Plus Icon Barbara Pollack View All February 26, 2014 5:00am When the Rubell Family Collection opened its doors with an exhibition of 28 Chinese artists in time for Art Basel Miami Beach last December, one of the stars that emerged from the show was Liu Wei , whose brand of geometric abstraction surprised many Americans looking for more stereotypical hallmarks of Chinese art ...

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Critical Mass by Kerry Tribe
© » KADIST

Scoring Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Critical Mass (1971), Los Angeles based artist Kerry Tribe stages a live performance of an arguing couple, retaining the quick, repetitive cuts and staccato rhythm produced through careful editing of the film...

Press Release: Art21 to Release Two New Films in October: “Paul Pfeiffer: Interrupting the Broadcast” and “Wong Ping: The Freedom of Animation”
© » ART21

Press Release: Art21 to Release Two New Films in October: “Paul Pfeiffer: Interrupting the Broadcast” and “Wong Ping: The Freedom of Animation”...

Microfilm
© » KADIST

Julien Crépieux

2012

Julien Crépieux is interested in the medium of video and its confrontation with cinema...

A Border Musical
© » KADIST

Chto Delat

In this film is the story of two neighboring yet philosophically opposing nations: Russia and Norway...