Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin
Priority Innfield
2 October–21 December 2014
Zabludowicz Collection
176 Prince of Wales Road
London NW5 3PT
Hours: Thursday–Sunday noon–6pm
or by appointment
Free
www.zabludowiczcollection.com
Twitter / Facebook / #FitchTrecartinZC
Zabludowicz Collection is pleased to announce the first UK solo exhibition by Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, two artists whose collaborative practice is one of the most significant in contemporary art today. The exhibition Priority Innfield ambitiously reconfigures their untitled work commissioned for The Encyclopedic Palace at the 55th Venice Biennale, 2013.
For Zabludowicz Collection, Fitch and Trecartin have transformed the spaces of the former Methodist chapel, unifying them with paint and carpet and a newly re-mastered soundtrack that fills the whole building. A series of sculptural theatres reminiscent of empty suburban environments such as stadium bleachers, vacant lots or pool houses become thresholds to Fitch and Trecartin’s universe. Housed within these are four movies that explore the impact of technology on memory and conceptions selfhood, particularly through our changing relationship to the camera.
The tension between history and evolution is a theme that permeates the four movies. Junior War comprises edited footage Trecartin shot of his peers during high school in Ohio in the late ’90s. It shows the familiar dark energy of adolescent excess, and also a bygone era before social media ushered in a culture of continually documenting and sharing one’s life. The other three movies, Item Falls, CENTER JENNY, and Comma Boat, expand this idea of the self as an image. Set in a post-human future, these movies are located within a gaming system in which the characters are a new type of people at a dystopian university. Through the study of their human past, they evolve and ascend to the next caste-like “level.”
Now living in Los Angeles, Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin (both b. 1981) have collaborated on and off since they met in 2000 studying at Rhode Island School of Design. Based on finely honed scripts, Trecartin’s video works construct meticulously realised visual worlds that incorporate contributions from a whole cast of collaborators. Fitch and Trecartin work together to create the sculptural theatres and the forms of sculpture that exist inside the movies such as the sets and wardrobe. Their installations de-familiarise everyday locations, feverishly animating and collaging together the simultaneity of multiple worlds, identities and languages that have become catalyzed in the age of the Internet.
Rather than an ironic or simplistic parody of our mediated culture, Fitch and Trecartin implicate themselves fully inside of its workings. From this cacophony they generate inventive and emotionally affecting spaces that reflect something of the chaos of existence.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a major new book including essays by Bridget Crone, Christopher Glazek, Kenneth Goldsmith and an interview with Lizzie Fitch.
Alongside weekly family workshops and tours, there will be a programme of free live performances and talks:
Performance: Total Freedom’s Burning Head Collage
Friday 17 October, 8–11pm
LA-based DJ and artist Ashland Mines (aka Total Freedom) curates a night of international DJ acts and live performances
Talk: Virtual Immersion
Thursday 13 November, 7–9pm
Panel discussion with Lisa Åkervall, Nicolas de Oliveira, Bridget Crone and Nicholas Ridout
Talk: Ossian Ward
Thursday 27 November, 7–9pm
Performance: Then Nothing Happens Because Nothing Ever Does
Thursday 4 December, 7–9pm
Video and live works by Holly Childs, Jesse Darling, Rosie Hastings, Hannah Quinlan Anderson amongst others.
For more information, images or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Anna Minarikova, Sutton PR
annam [at] suttonpr.com / T +44 (0) 20 7183 3577
Zabludowicz Collection
Zabludowicz Collection is dedicated to bringing emerging art to new audiences and actively supporting arts organisations and artists. It was founded in 1994 and in 2014/15 will celebrate its 20th anniversary. The Collection holds over 3,000 works by over 500 artists focussed on emerging art from the late 20th century to the present day. Zabludowicz Collection’s programme collaborates with artists and curators to produce exhibitions which examine contemporary art practice and the Collection in a public forum and respond to the unusual exhibition space at 176 Prince of Wales Road. The Collection also exhibits in permanent venues in the USA and Finland.
