London, 13.01-19.02.2010.




Rokeby presents Conrad Ventur’s first solo exhibition in the UK.

Ventur is recongised for creating complex environments and installations that raise questions regarding time and space. Whilst exploring the subject in relation to historical and contemporary technologies, not as a complete unity but rather as multiple temporal configurations.

In his most recent work This is My Life (Shirley Bassey) Ventur downloads numerous pieces of footage from You Tube of Bassey singing “This Is My Life” throughout stages of her career. The films are concurrently filtered through slowly spinning crystal prisms suspended in front of the projectors to create an immersive environment of multiple moments, offering the viewer a conflated experience of past and present.

In his 2008 work Filmed in 1972 at the New London Theatre, the Glamorous Marlene Dietrich performs Pete Seger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Ventur uses one clip of Dietrich singing Seger’s song. In this instance the artist multiplied the actress’s representation through the projection hitting a mirrored disco ball. Other “stars” that have been the scrutiny of Ventur include Marylin Monroe and Elvis Presley; tragic characters whose subjectivity is already fragmented through their fame. Captured on film these historical figures also preserve a collective experience of sadness and loss, amalgamating the past with contemporary significance.

As illustrated by Daniel Birnbaum* and others, technology disrupts the perception of a continuous flow of time and offers us multiple non-hierarchical temporalities. The You Tube footage selected by Ventur, like all digital technologies, offers a collective space, but one that is in constant flux and that does not follow a linear order or reality. You Tube offers a space of temporal multiplicity.

In an on-going project, Ventur turns to the history of archival film footage to recreate Billy Name’s original Warhol Screen Tests. Seen recently at The Andy Warhol Museum Ventur films living Screen Test subjects in the same manner as the orignals. Ventur comments of the years separating the subjects, “eight minutes between two films that tell the story of forty years.” For Ventur the past and present are united in a narrative that connects the two.

Conrad Ventur (b. 1977, Seattle) currently lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Goldsmiths College, London (2008) and has recently exhibited at Forever and today Inc. New York (2009), The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2009); P.P.O.W, New York (2009); 1/9 Unosunove Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2009); Architecture Annual, Bucharest (2008); Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2008); Louis Blouin Institute, London (2008); Invisible-Exports, New York (2008); Ludlow 38, Kunstverein Munchen Goethe Institute, New York (2008); Somerset House, London (2008); and Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden (2008), among other international solo and group exhibitions. In 2004, Ventur launched the contemporary art magazine USELESS.

* Daniel Birnbaum, Chronology, 2005

____________________
Rokeby
5-9 Hatton Wall
London EC1N 8HX
T +44 (0) 20 7193 5034
www.rokebygallery.com