C91 Reviews
San Francisco (video)
There is a sense of history and of excitement when one enters the 4th floor of SFMOMA. It is the sheer scale of the show and the depth of its coverage that impresses, and everyone who has been involved in its creation should be congratulated. My introduction to the exhibition took the form of a lecture, Cool History- The Early Days of Video , given by David A. Ross, Director of SFMOMA, who advised the Kramlich selection. Ross knows a lot about the subject: he started the first museum department devoted to the collection and study of video, in the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1971. The Kramlichs began collecting historical video tapes made between 1968 and 1974, e.g. Joan Jonas' Vertical Role , 1972, and Nam June Paik's Global Groove , 1973, but then progressed to installation and sculptural pieces after visiting Documenta IX in 1992. The wonderful part of visiting this exhibition is being able to see works installed that we have only read about or seen in black-and-white images, e.g. Vito Acconci's Sex in the Classroom made in 1978, a wonderful, playful affront to sexual attitudes in America, using video, slides, porn flicks and text. On a video monitor a puppet-like but real penis ascends and descends from view while a voice-over shouts "There she blows"! There are two pieces by Gilbert and George, made in 1970 and 1972 , and a very interesting work by Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Anne,Aki, and God , 1998 , about madness and melancholy. This was one of the most original installations, using separate areas to counterpoint dialogue by different characters . Gary Hill's Circular Breathing , 1994, is stunning--on five floor-to-ceiling portrait screens images flicker and change in rhythmic harmony. The five video projectors show fragments of people's lives--someone writing a letter, a child reciting from a book, a speedboat driven by an older man coming straight towards us--they are all very separate, yet threaded together in a circular depiction of our thought processes. The soundtrack is equally strong, slowing and speeding up to underpin the images. It would look and sound wonderful in the Douglas Hyde Gallery.
Steve McQueen's Deadpan, 1997, is in the collection as is Stephanie Smyth and Edward Stewart's simultaneously repulsive and endearing Sustain, 1995. James Coleman is represented by his 1993/1994 work, I N I T I A L S. Bill Viola's Greeting , 1995, inspired by Pontormo's The Visitation (1528-1529) is shown, as is work by Bruce Nauman, Stan Douglas, and Jane and Louise Wilson.
If there is any flaw in this exhibition it is the lack of work by women artists from the early history of media art. I missed the work of Yoko Ono, Joan Jonas, Susan Hiller and Martha Rosler. One wonders why Judith Barry is not in the collection, an artist who has shown in MoMA,and in the Venice Biennale, and Adrian Piper's powerful work on racial tensions in America would make a good addition. Dara Birnbaum, famous for her Rio video wall, 1989, is represented with an impressive multi-channel video installation, Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission , 1988-90; it is the only truly political work in the show. An exhibition like this makes one wonder about archiving video in Ireland. We too have an art-video history that dates from the seventies. The work that was made then is on VHS and U-Matic tapes that are very vulnerable. It is important that they be available to students and artist interested in Media Art now and in the future.
Seeing Time: Selections from the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection of Media Art
