Video Installations: Nic Nicosia, Brian Fridge, Bill Viola

This series of four separate video installations offers a glimpse of an extremely important medium in contemporary American art. Nic Nicosia will inaugurate this four-part exhibition, followed by Brian Fridge and Bill Viola. Please check back for announcement of the 4th artist of the series.

Nic Nicosia March 8-April 10

Santa Fe-based video artist Nic Nicosia will present his new film, entitled 9.5 Hours to SaFe (2004) at the Sheldon from Mar. 8 - Apr. 10. A native of Texas, Nicosia's video will be shown at the Sheldon after being premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas in January. It is a nine and one-half hour film documenting his move from Dallas, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Nicosia's videos and photographs are in major public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was represented in the Whitney Biennale in 2000.

Brian Fridge April 19-May 22

Brian Fridge, a Fort Worth, Texas based artist will present his film, Vault Sequence at the Sheldon Apr. 19 - May 22. Also presented at the Whitney Biennale in 2000, Vault Sequence is unedited black and white video images that, although shot inside a home freezer, suggest the grandeur of a cosmos. Fridge will be at the Sheldon to talk about his work the week of Apr. 19.

Bill Viola May 31 – July 3

In Mary, a work from 2000 by internationally-recognized video artist Bill Viola, a woman is seen working alone in her office in a medical facility. She is dressed in a white lab coat, writing slowly on a pad of paper and reading at her desk. A large microscope and personal objects surround her—a coffee mug imprinted with butterflies, a nautilus shell, and a small figurine rest near her computer screen, which displays an x-ray image of a human skull. The symbolic objects and composition of Mary are in keeping with the idea of a vanitas or still life paintings popular in 15th- and 16th-century Europe that referred to the contemplation of mortality and the transience of earthly pleasures or achievements.

Using cutting edge technological advances in film production, Viola began a series of works in 2000 known as “The Passions” that addressed the fundamental issues concerning the human condition - joy, anger, fear and sorrow. Mary was filmed using a specialized high-speed 35mm camera that shoots 240 frames per second (standard is 24 frames per second). The single take of footage is approximately one minute long and then extended or slowed down to last fifteen minutes. The figure is seen in extreme slow motion. The nuance of body language like a blink of an eye, the slight shift of a head or a subtle hand movement becomes heightened and remains suspended in the viewer’s conscious awareness. Mary also has a sound component. We hear ambient but diffused sounds of the lab—electronic equipment, telephones and public announcements, as one might hear in a hospital. We are confronted with an intensely intimate moment, the act of grieving. In a place where one is expected to be emotionally objective, we are privy to an expression of vulnerability. What is critical, however, is that each viewer is left to initiate his or her own reading of the story to explain the event.

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Video Installations: Nic Nicosia, Brian Fridge, Bill Viola