The MAN Museum is pleased to announce the imminent opening of Jennifer West’s exhibition, Action Movies, Painted Films and History Collage, edited by Lorenzo Giusti.
The American artist’s first solo exhibition in an Italian museum, the exhibition is made up of a group of 10 works created since 2005 and a new work which constitutes a turning point in the artist’s production.
Film Title Poem (2016) it is in fact the last and only sound film made by West. The artist describes the work as a “psychic montage of my inner history of cinema”. The work is presented as a collage of images, taken from over 500 film titles, transferred onto 35mm film. The materiality of the film – later transferred to digital support – is underlined by the direct intervention on the film through engraved motifs, contours, traces and perforations. Sensual, abstract and imaginative at the same time, the work investigates the impact of fiction on our memory and the way in which the digital revolution has changed the experience of viewing.
Jennifer West began systematically exploring the possibility of producing films without the aid of a video camera in 2004. The artist removes the film from its context of conventional use, intervening on it through different processes, which can range from traditional artistic techniques (painting, drawing, collage, graffiti, engraving), to alternative actions such as emulsion, chemical manipulation or direct exposure to light of photosensitive materials. The result is an immersive and psychedelic “filmic space”, a material animation of signs and images, characterized by acid tones and excited rhythms.
Conceived in some cases as real performances, Jennifer West’s actions on film often involve the involvement of other people, as well as the use of everyday materials, from food to lipstick to motorcycle tyres, or exposure to action of natural agents in places of particular significance.
It is the case of Salt Crystal Spiral Jetty Dead Sea Five Years Film (2013), one of the ten works in the exhibition, created by immersing a film in a clay bath at a high temperature in 2008 and then cramming it among other objects in a suitcase, placed among the waste paper in the waste bin of the artist’s studio, covered of clay for five years and finally dragged along the salt-encrusted rocks of the famous Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, before being thrown into the icy waters of the Utah salt lake, in an attempt to evoke the original spirit of the work and the poetic vision of the American artist.
The exhibition at the MAN in Nuoro will also be an opportunity to launch a new work which, starting from an exploration of the territory, will originate in Sardinia in the days preceding the inauguration.
Jennifer West (Topanga, California) is internationally known for her research on materialism in cinema. He has received commissions from some of the most prestigious museum institutions, such as Tramway, Glasgow (2016); PICA TBA Fest (2014); High Line Art, New York (2012), The Aspen Art Museum (2010) and the Turbine Hall at TATE Modern in London (2009).
Solo exhibitions include: S1 Artspace, Sheffield, United Kingdom (2012); Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2010); Kunstverein Nuremberg (2010); Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008) and White Columns, New York (2007).
West has presented his work in numerous museums, events and exhibition spaces, including: Shenzhen Animation Biennial, Shenzhen (2016); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2015); Kunstlerhaus KM-Halle fur Kunst & Medien, Kunsterhaus Graz, Austria and Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio (2014); Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Nottingham Contemporary, England; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (2013); Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds, UK; MOCA, Cleveland, OH; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA, Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Contemporary ArtsForum, Santa Barbara; White Columns, New York; the Rubbell Family Collection, Miami (2015/2011); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Leubsdorf Gallery, Hunter College, New York, Seattle Art Museum (2010), Tate Modern, London; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2009), Drawing Center, New York, Aspen Art Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2008), CAPC Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France, Contemporary Art Museum, Detroit, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, ZKM Museum for New Media, Karlsruhe, Tate St. Ives (2007). A solo exhibition of his, “Film is Dead…” is currently on display at the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2016-2017).
