Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films. Here, the still images function in the same way as his cinematographic work: Highly aesthetic, they allow for the appearance of intricate visual patterns and layers of meaning that take scenes of everyday life as its source material. Both Dorsky’s cinematic and photographic works follow a stream of consciousness that rejects representation or fixed narrative structure. Intended as transparent, direct objects to be experienced, these intimate and quiet works encourage contemplation.
Nathaniel Dorsky belongs to a younger generation of filmmakers that follows key figures of the Bay Area avant-garde scene, like Bruce Conner, and is mainly associated with Canyon Cinema. In this tradition of experimental film, Dorsky’s poetic, meditative silent films continue the free visual association of images.
In borrowing and subverting images from popular culture, Sadie Benning exposes the media’s role in constructing false and oppressive stereotypes of women, with regard to gender and sexual identity...
Taiwan WMD (Taiwan and Weapons of Mass Destruction) is part of a long-term research started in early 2010 on the history and aftermath effects of Japanese biological and chemical warfare in China during WWII, as well as the unknown history of Taiwan’s nuclear program...
Unlike many of his earlier films which often present poignant critiques of mass media and its deleterious effects on American culture, EASTER MORNING , Conner’s final video work before his death in 2008, constitutes a far more meditative filmic essay in which a limited amount of images turn into compelling, almost hypnotic visual experience...
Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...
Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...
The White Album (2008) presents a compilation of one hundred issues of Artforum magazine released between 1970 and 1979...
Wolfgang Tillmans initiated the ongoing series Faltenwurf in 1989, representing compositions of unused clothing, with special attention paid to the ways in which they drape and fold...
Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...
Houck’s Peg and John was made as part of a series of photographic works that capture objects from the artist’s childhood...
Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different...
While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
Gutmann’s photographs Untitled Nob Hill and From the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge are some of the oldest pieces in the Kadist Collection and serve as historical anchors for many of the more recent works...
Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection...