Video Review (73:34 min)

Milano, 24/06 – 11/09, 2010

Jerome Zodo Contemporary art gallery is glad to present a selection of artworks by three young International artists: Terry Chatkupt, Tigran Khachatryan and Simon Senn. The artworks will be presented in a videographic exhibition entitled Video Review (73:34 min).

The show will open on Thursday, 24th June at 6 p.m. in the milanese venue of via Lambro 7, and will last until Saturday 11th September 2010, just after the summer break scheduled for August. For the whole period of the Video Review (73:34 min) show, the gallery will be opened from Tuesday to Friday, from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m.
The opening will feature a press conference scheduled for 7 p.m. This will be a moment of reflection and dialogue between artists and spectators.

Inspired on the continuative disposition of the cinematographic shows, the exhibition proposes a series of the latest video artworks realized by three young International artists: Terry Chatkupt (1977, Excelsior Springs, USA), Tigran Khachatryan (1980, Yerevan, Armenia) and Simon Senn (1986, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland).
Three artists for three different show environments, each especially studied to house the exhibition within the space of the gallery only.
Their disposition suggests the idea and the structure of the “Invisible Cinema” projected by Peter Kubelka for the Anthology Film Archive of New York in the late Sixties: ideal small spaces, shut and isolated from all external inputs, black boxes in which the fruition of the audio-visual material becomes a stimulating and reflexive experience, an area of perfect reception of the cinematographic living.

Video Review (73:34 min) experiments with the practices of the tiny multi-hall screening, by wondering about the twofold game holding the essence of the video as an artistic object, its fruition and the related consciousness of the filmic stream.
The chronic programming of the show lets us consider the video-fabric according to a peculiar physical angle: that of time. Each artwork is continuously reputed, looped, and such a repeatability puts the visual question and the effect exerted on the observer in a constant becoming. The spectator observes, participates, waits, sits down or runs away; each time, the repeated experience will be different.

Time becomes the enquiry instrument both for the reading of the contemporary structure and for the comprehension of its products. When caught and transcribed in the score of video language, time acquires an extremely strong component which reveals today’s identity. A reflection also over the identity of time itself, on which not only the artists, but the spectators too reflect.
The “moment of cubism” broke the bottom of time introducing the notions of duration and fragmentation, while celluloid carved it in a sequence of standard units. The temporal dimension was the inspiring element for the research of many authors including Henri Bergson, Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, as well as the more recent Peter Greenaway e Daniel Birnbaum.

Terry Chatkupt, Tigran Khachatryan and Simon Senn experiment with various ways of interpreting the meaning of time expressed by the audio-visual medium.
The sub-indication – (73:34 min) – to the title – Video Review – corresponds to the total sum of the duration of all the artworks in the exhibition, three for each artist.

Terry Chatkupt

Field Memories, 2010
single-channel HD video with sound narrated by Jane Pickett
Running time: 4:55 min.

Park Memories, 2009 – 2010
single-channel HD video with sound narrated by Grendal Hanks and Tina Vardanyan
Running time: 7:00 min.
Trail Memories, 2008
single-channel video with sound
Running time: 5:52 min.

Terry Chatkupt (1977, Excelsior Springs, MO, USA) his artworks – mainly photographs, videos and installations – have been presented in several museums and artistic displays in the USA, like the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MOMA) in 2009; the Seattle Art Museum and the PDX Film Festival in 2008; as well as Art Basel Miami Beach Video Lunge in 2007; the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse and  the Harris Lieberman, both in the state of New York; the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Sweeney Art Gallery of the University of California; and the New Chinatown Barbershop of Los Angeles, the city where he lives and works. Graduated at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), in 2003 he attended the residential programme of the Skowhegan School of Paintings and Sculptures in the state of Maine (USA).

Tigran Khachatryan (1980, Yerevan, Armenia) introduced himself on the international artistic panorama by participating in the prestigious generational exhibition “Younger Than Jesus” – organized in 2009 by the New Museum of New York – with the audio-visual artwork Nachalo. In the same year he shows in “Fair Politics” at Regina Gallery, Moscow, his work Man with a video camera.
After getting his graduation degree at the Art Academy of Yerevan, Armenia, in 2004, and after attending the “Saison est-ouest” programme at the Residence of Visual Arts of Die, France, in 2007, he took part to several important world-known artistic displays, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lyon, France, the ARTSPACE of Sydney, Australia, in 2007, and the Biennale di Venezia in 2001.

Simon Senn (1986, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Svizzera) mainly active on the European artistic scene, won last year the prize of the Kiefer Hablitzel Foundation of Berne, Switzerland. Simon Senn is attending the course of performance at the University of Art and Design of Geneva (HEAD) and, together with his group Californium 248, he resides at the Théâtre de l’Usine of Geneva. In January 2010 in (ex) communicate at Jerome Zodo Contemporary, he shows for the first time in Italy his work L’hôtel des sapins, now acquired by Kunsthaus Zürich. In April 2010 he has opened his first personal exhibition entitled Participatory Panopticon at the CACT (Centre for Contemporary art of Ticino) of Bellinzona, Switzerland.