Cory Arcangel & Beige will be represented by two works: one a projection, the other a monitor piece. Arcangel, and his accomplices -- a collective who call themselves "Beige" -- hack Nintendo game chips and alter their contents. By traveling backward to the nascent technology of "interactive" video, Arcangel and company rewrite science in reverse, chucking "advancement" out the window. One work, Shoot Andy Warhol, is a working video game that can be played by visitors to the gallery -- we gain points by shooting Warhol, but lose points if we accidentally shoot Colonel Sanders, the Pope or Flavor Flav. A large wall projection of wondrous blue with white digital clouds is simply a Mario Bros. game chip with all of the human figures removed.
London-based artist Maria Marshall will present a brand new piece entitled Staying Alive, the latest in a body of work that utilizes a split between sound and image to trigger an open response to a visual puzzle. In this work, shot in an elaborate London disco, a group of eight year-olds are seen dancing in continuous motion. The soundtrack, recorded separately, is a scene from the film Saturday Night Fever as enacted by two youngsters. The caustic dialogue, about climbing above one's class roots, is made powerfully and emotionally ironic through the unusual context of its presentation. Marshall is concurrently participating in The Whitney Museum of American Art's exhibition entitled The American Effect.
Jon Routson, whose exhibition of Hollywood bootlegs occupied our space this past March, shows one of his Strober pieces. For these works the artist emptied part of his apartment and built a black set in which was placed a strobe light. A video camera was set up and aimed at the light which was then set to pulsate. The resultant imagery, flashing and aggressive, borders on the "unwatchable" -- that great, nebulous territory we love to theorize but can't stand being subjected to.