Eraser
2014 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
Will Rogan
Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees. The steely grey sky stands in stark contrast to the vehicle’s luminously pristine white finish and makes this already deathly object seem even more ghostly. The grass underneath is half-turned brown and further marks this as a lifeless landscape. Suddenly, however, a flash begins to emerge from the front tire, illuminating the ground with a fiery glow. As it begins to radiate, the flash slowly spreads across the hood and the windows until the car begins to buckle, smoke creeping up in columns across the sky. As the door juts off the body, we begin to realize that we’re witnessing an explosion in slow motion, total destruction rendered almost balletic through a poetic stretching of time. Shot with a technically advanced camera that shoots 6,900 frames per second, Eraser expands four seconds of “real” time into a nearly six minute duration in which we witness a slow but absolute annihilation. By slowing down the video’s pace to a near crawl, Rogan’s work could be seen as a deliberate resistance to mortality, as if he could actually forestall or delay death in defying the rules of time. At the same time, he employs a wry visual humor that relishes in absurdity in which the exploding hearse becomes an over-the-top funeral pyre and a clear example of “overkill.” In gesturing towards a darkly comic ars moriendi, Eraser fits alongside other humorous narratives about death such as the 1971 Hal Ashby film Harold and Maude , which also ends with a scene of a similarly demolished hearse. But just as that film ends with the promise of hopeful next chapters, Rogan’s video also offers the strange but meditative possibility of regenerative beginnings. Screened on a continuous loop, Rogan signals that it is impossible to escape reminders of our mortality, and just as the explosion finishes, the hearse appears again, seemingly untouched. But if death is ultimately inescapable, Rogan also reveals the beauty in clearing away its reminders and beginning again out of fire and smoke.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Will Rogan’s practice reflects the poignant, the ironic, the disastrous, and the beautiful in his surrounding urban and domestic landscapes. In the form of photography, video, and sculpture, his interventions often highlight the profound and analytical in everyday life. Taking a playful stance on mundane situations and structures, Rogan’s work merges the critical with the poetic. He is also the co-editor and founder of the quarterly journal of editions, The Thing .
Colors:
Related works sharing similar palette
© » KADIST
Chemi Rosado-Seijo
2016Map of the Universe from El Cerro continues Chemi Rosado-Seijo’s long-term engagement with the community of El Cerro , a rural, working-class community living in the mountains of Naranjito, Puerto Rico...
© » KADIST
Jedediah Caesar
2010After being cast, the resulting resin block used in JCA-25-SC was cut into thin slices obtaining a series of rectangular shapes that resemble ceramic tiles...
© » 1854 PHOTOGRAPHY
The power of collaboration, laid out for all to see - 1854 Photography Subscribe latest Agenda Bookshelf Projects Industry Insights magazine Explore ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Explore Stories latest agenda bookshelf projects theme in focus industry insights magazine ANY ANSWERS FINE ART IN THE STUDIO PARENTHOOD ART & ACTIVISM FOR THE RECORD LANDSCAPE PICTURE THIS CREATIVE BRIEF GENDER & SEXUALITY MIXED MEDIA POWER & EMPOWERMENT DOCUMENTARY HOME & BELONGING ON LOCATION PORTRAITURE DECADE OF CHANGE HUMANITY & TECHNOLOGY OPINION THEN & NOW Uyghur Community © Carolyn Drake Gathering hundreds of images and contributors, a new book challenges narratives on photographic history and collaboration On 13 March 2021, Patsy Stevenson attended a vigil in London for Sarah Everard, a young woman who had been raped and killed by a serving police officer...
© » BROOKLYN STREET ART
BSA Images Of The Week: 11.05.23 | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Nobody was out Friday night when we went to see “Stop Making Sense” on the screen; the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn at 10 pm were rather lightly attended, possibly because everyone was recovering from a mid-week Halloween/Day of the Dead blast of drunkenness, revelry, laughter, and tears...
© » ARTFORUM
New York’s Rubin Museum to Shutter, Pursue Decentralized Model – Artforum Read Next: ITALIAN CULTURE MINISTER VITTORIO SGARBI EXITS UNDER PRESSURE Subscribe Search Icon Search Icon Search for: Search Icon Search for: Follow Us facebook twitter instagram youtube Alerts & Newsletters Email address to subscribe to newsletter...
© » KADIST
Qing Zhang
2006603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...
© » KADIST
Minia Biabiany
2020Musa is a visual and textual work by Minia Biabiany and the starting point of a broader research around the sexuality of Caribbean women, the historical legacy of slavery, and the artist’s own female lineage...
© » SLASH PARIS
Construire — Corrélations entre le dessin et la céramique — Espace d’art contemporain Camille Lambert — Exposition — Slash Paris Connexion Newsletter Twitter Facebook Construire — Corrélations entre le dessin et la céramique — Espace d’art contemporain Camille Lambert — Exposition — Slash Paris Français English Accueil Événements Artistes Lieux Magazine Vidéos Retour Construire — Corrélations entre le dessin et la céramique Exposition Céramique, dessin, techniques mixtes, vidéo Derniers Jours Hélène Mougin, La dune, 2023 Grès et faïence émaillés et photo résinée, 20 × 32 × 23 cm Hélène Mougin Construire Corrélations entre le dessin et la céramique Encore 5 jours : 7 octobre → 16 décembre 2023 Une idée se conçoit, se développe et devient projet construit...
© » KADIST
Mohamed Bourouissa
Mohamed Bourouissa’s “ Shoplifters” Series was created in 2014-2015, in a neighborhood supermarket in Lefferts Garden, Brooklyn...
© » KADIST
Carlos Amorales
2006This work, a large oil painting on canvas, shows a moment from Amorales’s eight-minute two-channel video projection Useless Wonder (2006)...