List Projects: Redmond Entwistle
January 6–February 15, 2015
MIT List Visual Arts Center
20 Ames St., Building E15
Cambridge, MA 02139
Combining documentary with fictional scenarios, the films of Redmond Entwistle (b. London, 1977) examine specific geographical sites, pedagogical models, and historical figures and events as a means to address larger issues—for the films in this exhibition, these concerns include how economic inequalities are reproduced across generations and the rise and collapse of democratic institutions. Entwistle’s films often engage binary relationships or dualisms—such as original and reproduction, historical interpretation and lived experience, individual and institution. Rather than arranging these in a conservative hierarchy, or an equivalent or interchangeable postmodern series, Entwistle is “more interested in a kind of nesting” of mediums and techniques that allows a “determinate aesthetic,” one that considers the limits of artistic representation.
By way of archival footage and restaged interviews, Walk-Through (2012, 16mm film to HD video, color and b&w, sound, 18 minutes), considers the history of the California Institute of the Arts, in particular the impact of artist Michael Asher’s “post-studio” class on his former students. Entwistle’s work becomes a means for examining the commodification of education and how individual speech functions in contemporary art as well as in democracy. In Monuments (2010, 16mm film to HD video, color, sound, 29 minutes), the artists Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Robert Smithson, are portrayed or “reproduced” by actors who revisit the writings and sites of the artists’ work in New Jersey. In retracing these artists’ histories, the film also documents the decline of industry in the region, operating as an allegory for the effects of globalization on America’s built environment since the late 1960s.
Film screening and artist’s talk
Saturday, January 10, 4pm, Bartos Theatre, E15 Lower Level
In conjunction with the gallery installation, Entwistle will be present to screen and discuss four of his films created between 2000 and 2009—Belfast Trio (2009), Satellite (2009), Paterson-Łódź (2006), and Social Visions (2000)—whose subjects range from the intertwined history of labor uprisings in early 20th century Poland and New Jersey to Belfast’s efforts to enter the global creative economy in the 21st century.
List Projects: Redmond Entwistle will be the artist’s first solo institutional exhibition and most comprehensive screening of his works to date. The exhibition is curated by Alise Upitis, Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.
Support for List Projects is generously provided by the Council for the Arts at MIT; the Office of the Associate Provost at MIT; the Massachusetts Cultural Council; the MIT List Visual Arts Center Advisory Committee; and the Friends of the List.
