Wednesday February 21st, 2018
4:30-6:30pm
Greer Garson Screening Room - Owen Fine Arts Center
Burden (2016) chronicles conceptual artist Chris Burden’s career, examining his shocking and in many cases, subversive art. Burden pushed his body and art to its limits, crucifying himself to the back of a Volkswagen and allowing himself to be shot.
The screening of Burden coincides with the Hawn Gallery’s current exhibition CLEAR, DEEP, DARK (Jan 26-March 11) of works by Julie Morel. Morel’s work Clear, Deep, Dark builds upon Morel’s earlier conductive ink drawings, incorporating new terms related to the Darkent – an overlay network that gives users access to the hidden side of the internet. Morel’s work examines the transformation of objects and their versions – how objects’ physical forms transmute into intangible ones in the digital sphere, only to be seen and not touched.
Morel’s interest in objects’ versions was inspired in part by Chris Burden’s Through the Night Softly (1973). Burden’s desire growing up was to be on TV, and in order to realize this, he purchased 10 seconds of airtime during commercial breaks on a local television station. He aired clips of a performance piece that involved him crawling over glass chips. Morel’s interest in it lies not in the performance itself, but in the video’s transformation over 40 years. In 2008, Morel discovered a clip of the work on YouTube, also a copy of a piece belonging to the Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Burden helps shed light onto Morel’s work, showing how different mediums – in this case conceptual art, net art, and typography – inform one another and challenge traditional conceptions of art.
Watch the Trailer Here