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...

Fire Cycles III (Subcycle 10)
© » KADIST

Anthony McCall

1974

This score is a graphic record of the detailed choreography of one of Anthony McCall’s Landscape for Fire performances...

Charles Baudelaire
© » KADIST

Mary Reid Kelley

2015

Kelley’s 2015 portrait of the poet Charles Baudelaire is one of a series of poets, rappers, and other thinkers who have influenced the artist’s ideas about beauty, creativity, and expression...

Related works featuring themes of: » Color Photography, » Cultural Commentary, » Film/Video, » Installation Art, » American  
» see more

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...

Swimming in Rivers of Glue
© » KADIST

Julieta Aranda

2016

The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...

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...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

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...

Canton Novelty
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2016

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China...

South Africa Righteous Space
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

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...

Au Musée Picasso, à Paris, Léonce Rosenberg ou les mésaventures d’un marchand d’art
© » LE MONDE

Au Musée Picasso, à Paris, Léonce Rosenberg ou les mésaventures d’un marchand d’art Cet article vous est offert Pour lire gratuitement cet article réservé aux abonnés, connectez-vous Se connecter Vous n'êtes pas inscrit sur Le Monde ? Inscrivez-vous gratuitement Article réservé aux abonnés « Le Combat » (1928), de Giorgio De Chirico...

Bab Sebta (Ceuta’s Gate)
© » KADIST

Randa Maroufi

2019

Randa Maroufi’s Bab Sebta , is named after a Spanish enclave in Morocco, Ceuta...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

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”...

A Border Musical
© » KADIST

Chto Delat

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

The Town
© » KADIST

Michel Auder

1999

The Town consists of footage taken from Auder’s studio of the skyline of New York, tracking planes as they fly across the sky and pass tall buildings...