Opening tonight at the Waterfront Tunnel event space in Chelsea is the Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair, featuring installations by over 30 exhibitors including Eva and Franco Mattes‘ haunting, critically acclaimed Emily’s Video. Other notable works on view are Zhao Zhao’s serene, ambiguity-laden I Cannot Sleep Sadly by Your Side, Cathy Begien’s deadpan party-night narrative Black Out and Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s series of dioramic LCD installations Twenty One Twelve.
This year, there seems to be less glitch and animation art than in recent memory, with a number of artists working instead with repurposed motion pictures and antiquated media, like Michel Auder’s resurrected film Shopping Heads or Kevin Cooley’s stack of TVs in Launch Failure II.
The most immersive installation might be Rbt. Sps.’s Selection from This New Sitcom, screening VHS camcorder “snippets of his rural and solitary Southern reality” on an old TV in a reconstructed dank living room from a few decades past littered with photos and other period ephemera. Nothing is as eerily transporting at the fair as the hum of that ancient CRT tube and the musky odor of the 70s era plastic-wraped couch.
The first installation in the tunnel is The Shortest Video Ever Sold! (#SVAES), a special curatorial project by ANIMAL’s Art Editor Marina Galperina and Hyperallergic’s Senior Editor (and ANIMAL freelance writer) Kyle Chayka with Postmasters Gallery. Participating artists William Powhida, Ryder Ripps, Anthony Antonellis, Tatiana Berg, Yung Jake, Man Bartlett, Yoshi Sodeoka, Rollin Leonard, Angela Washko, Nicolas Sassoon, Greg O’Malley, Marius Watz, Jonathan Minard, Kim Westfall, Actually Huizenga,The Jogging, Laura McMillian, Andrew Haarsager, James George, Sara Ludy, Alexander Porter, and Lullatone have all created original 6-second video art pieces, to be sold at $200 per Edition of 1 digital copy and the option of “First!” of tweeting or having the artist tweet the piece as a Vine at the collector, but more about that tomorrow. Reception is at 6pm until 8pm.
Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair, Mar 7 – Mar 10, Waterfront New York Tunnel, Chelsea
