Perhaps it is this conjunction of latent violence and frozen purity that stamps Larson's work as distinctively American, a quality that may have enhanced his international reputation.
#SURREALISM ART VIEW FROM HEAVEN FULL#
The gunshot photos are more somber - black-on-black filigrees of shattered plywood - but they too are full of psychic tension, inky images that are at once lacy, serene and despairing. Although they were born in the inherently violent gesture of shooting a gun, the sculptures have the innocent look of deformed ice cream cones melting on a sidewalk. The sculptures, cast from holes made by shooting bullets into large blocks of clay, seem oddly innocent, even pretty. As they move crude levers and gears, the machine transports ice cylinders around a roofless room, a Sisyphean task executed with hypnotic intensity. (One of Larson's felt costumes is displayed in a gallery window.) As is typical in a Larson film, the actors are virtually yoked to an enormous wooden machine of enigmatic purpose. The three actors' strange behavior is inexplicably fascinating, a kind of robotic ballet performed in gray felt suits reminiscent of Joseph Beuys' famous everyman garment. The ice-encrusted rooms in which the film is set are mesmerizing, aglow with silvery light. Whether it's all a metaphor for the glum state of the world's economy is anyone's guess, but "Deep North" - on view at Burnet Gallery in the chichi Chambers Hotel - has an intensely personal feel. This does not appear to be the work of a happy camper. And to plop copies of his new book, called "Failure," on the entrance desk. And to show the film continuously in a gallery festooned with silvery blob sculptures, a trashed guitar and dark photos depicting holes made by shotgun blasts into black plywood.
You have to admire the chutzpah of Chris Larson's decision to greet spring with an eight-minute film about felt-clad automatons doing fruitless labor in an ice-encrusted shack.
0 kommentar(er)
