Flatscape Video Art Series
On February 18, 2011, Baton Rouge Gallery’s Flatscape Video Art Series returned with its most exciting lineup to date. Located inside BREC’s Historic City Park, Baton Rouge Gallery (“BRG”) has long focused on the work of accomplished video artists (dating back to the 1960s) with the Flatscape program. However, in 2011, the program was revamped to provide the community with a truly contemporary look at American video art; both what it is and where it, as a medium, is going.
In the Fall of 2010, BRG announced a nationwide call to artists with no boundaries outside of duration (works had to be no more than 15 minutes long). The resulting one-night event was a collection of contemporary video art never before seen inside the state of Louisiana from artists hailing from as far away as California, Rhode Island, New York, Michigan and Missouri.
A Baton Rouge Gallery artist member since 2000, Kelli Scott Kelley served as the juror for the 2011 Flatscape Video Art Series. Kelley’s provocative and message-laden work blurs the line between human and animal. The inspiration for much of her work stemmed from the reading of children’s books and fables to her son. Kelley works in painting, sculpture, printmaking, video and performance. Since moving back to her hometown of Baton Rouge, Kelley has been teaching art at Louisiana State University, where she is now an Associate Professor of Painting. Kelley has shown her work across the country including Hooks Epstein Gallery (Houston, TX), Taylor Bercier Gallery (New Orleans, LA) and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO). More information on Kelley can be found at kelliscottkelley.com.
The works of video art featured in the 2011 Flatscape Video Art Series are listed below and followed by an artist statement provided to BRG by the artist:
Title: “1990 – 95” | Artist: Nicole Sloan (Long Beach, CA)
“My work focuses on the recollection of memory, while fusing together found video and images from popular culture. Through re-appropriated images and personal narratives the viewer experiences content that is identifiable, relatable and even at times laughable. I hope to create a visual and psychological tension that changes within the piece, and challenges the viewers expectations of what is being presented to them.”
Title: “City Scape # 4” | Artist: David Webber (Lafayette, LA)
“The black dot constellations of petrified gum, tree branch shadows, reflections in puddles, shimmers of broken auto glass; these things are the punctuations of my walk to work. The urban landscape and my memories of it have been a part of my subject matter for some time, but recently I have taken on a multiple exposure process as a way of finding new horizons. This series is an investigation of the familiar everyday scenes of my surroundings and an exploration of visual relationships through superimposition.”
Title: “Pins and Needles” | Artist: Kirsten McNally (Providence, RI)
“A series of short video clips, one taken every day throughout the course of a single week. We are always very close to something. Life involves a very specific amount of balance.”
Title: “River City 21 – Tokyo” | Artist: Fillipo Tagliati (Grand Rapids, MI)
“[This piece relates] to my personal exploration and vision of the contemporary urban landscape in Tokyo, Japan. 'River City 21' is a 6min video covering a five hour time span with time-lapse video made from hundreds of images and a meticulous and structured post-process work.”
Title: “Sleep Skit” | Artist: Kurt Wahlstrom (Brooklyn, NY)
“How far will Mom and Dad go in a desperate attempt to wake up their son? To the left, Mom and Dad act out a frustrating morning ritual; to the right, I mock their exact actions and behaviors through the use of wigs, mustaches and other props that characterize, yet comically fictionalize their personas. The synced-up execution of these video results in an uncanny portrait of a typical suburban family exaggerated in a dysfunctional turn of events.”
Title: “Water” | Artist: Jesse Aldere (New York, NY)
“This film is about water and the mystery that takes place with water as its accomplice.”
Title: “Breaking Building I, Part I” | Artist: B. Colby Jennings (Springfield, MO)
“This documented performance addresses topics of the land and the figure’s relationship with it, but also of the figure's toil. The video loops the action to build on the cyclical nature of this relationship and the ceaseless struggle for dominance.”
Title: “Confined 10-01-2” | Artist: Russell Chartier (West Haven, CT)
“In this piece, Russell Chartier explores the sense of confinement that many people feel living in large cities despite the many people around them. The piece, created using manipulated footage shot throughout NYC, consists of textures comprised of feedback loops uplinked to satellites then downlinked back to Earth. These ‘feedback loops’ were manipulated with various pieces of broadcast equipment through the looping process and were then further manipulated in the post production process. The textures and manipulated footage were then woven together to create this work. The piece was created through synchronicity—the composer [Paul J.] Botelho and Chartier had no knowledge of each other's component and worked only with an agreed upon duration during the creation of their individual pieces.”
For more information on the 2011 Flatscape Video Art Series, contact BRG at 225.383.1470.
