YoungProjects is pleased to present Suspension, a two-person show exploring the relationship between time and image through the work of the Berlin-based experimental film artist, Reynold Reynolds and the New York-based photographer Kevin Cooley.

 

This exhibition was designed as a response to our epoch’s troubled relationship to time, which the author Mary Ann Doane attributes to “the prevalence of, and the adaptation to, ‘cinematic time’ by culture at large.” For Reynolds, who originally studied physics before being tutored by the filmmaker Stan Brakhage, cinema is one of the best mediums we have for exploring the relationship between moving imagery and horology, or the study of time. After all, film, in particular celluloid film, is made up of individual frames, or photographs, which gives us the perception of a temporal event through persistence of vision. Reynolds has used that idea as the basis for his trilogy, Secret Life (2008), Secret Machine (2009) and Six Easy Pieces (2010). In each of these films, which are shot in 16mm, he uses his movie camera like a still camera, clicking individual frames rather than shooting full motion. That creates a stop-motion effect where individual moments remain on screen for one second or more, which in turn mirror the movements of a clock, and thus frames of celluloid. What’s more, he builds elaborate set ups in his studio, where the movement of his camera through the mise-en-scene becomes another allegory for the temporal (such as the circular set/tracking show in Secret Life).

 

The exhibition also includes some of Reynolds early works: Burn (2002), and the four channel Seven Days Till Sunday (1998). These films, which were co-directed by the Irish artist Patrick Jolly who sadly passed away earlier this month, occupy a space that is entirely subjective much like a dream. (In fact Lucretius came up with the idea of Persistence of vision around 70 BC as a way of explaining the phenomena of dreams).

 

Suspension also features Cooley's large-scale ceiling projection, Skyward (2012), which presents a series of disparate time-based moments that have been seamlessly woven together into a unified whole (and thus extending the notion of Persistence of Vision into the realm of the digital). Beginning in downtown Los Angeles and ending high above Pacific Palisades the piece literally stitches together LA's disparate ecologies while creating an impossibly long tracking shot through LA's famously horizontal environs. Yet as a kind of rebuttal to Gursky and Crewdson’s “godlike” camera, he keeps his POV on the ground, forcing the viewer to look upwards rather than downwards. This results in a meditation on expansiveness that extends far beyond the confines of the camera, which in turn becomes a kind of secular ceiling painting.

 

Reynolds has received numerous awards for his experimental films and installations, including the festival award at the European Media Arts Festival Osnabrueek; First Prize at the Black Maria Film Festival, and First Prize at the SxSW Film Festival. He has also presented his work at the Tate Modern, the New Museum of Contemporary, PS1, White Cube Sweden, the Berlin Biennale, the Moscow Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Roma.

 

Cooley has shown his photographs and videos at the Swiss Institute NY, White Columns, Massimo Audiello, Site UK and is included in a number of important private and public collections including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.

 

Skyward was cofounded by a grant from the Experimental Television fund, and is being presented at YoungProjects in conjunction with the Paul Kopeikin Gallery, which will be presenting, “Take Refuge” his first solo show of recent photographs at the gallery.

 

Works in the Exhibition

 

(Front window, flat screen monitor in window)

 

Kevin Cooley Empire Lighting (2011)

HD Video, Blu Ray Disc, Flat screen tv 16:9, 30 mins looped

5+1 AP

 

(Lobby area, right wall)

 

Kevin Cooley, Skyward (2012)

(Four images taken from the film of the same name)

inkjet prints on archival paper 16x20

 

(Entryway)

 

Reynold Reynolds/Patrick Jolley, Seven Days Till Sunday (1998)

Four short film loops transferred from Super-8.

Four digital projectors, four SD DVD, four speakers, mono sound 4:3

 

Reynolds Reynolds, The Making of Secret Machine (2009)

video documentation, flatscreen tv, DVD player, stereo sound, headphones

 

(Main room, clockwise from left to right)

 

Reynold Reynolds, Secret Life (2008)

(2nd channel) 16mm film transferred to video.

Digital projector, media player, speakers, stereo sound 5 mins looped. 4:3

 

Reynold Reynolds, Secret Machine (2009)

(2 channel projection) 16mm film transferred to video.

Digital projector, media player, stereo sound, 5 mins, looped 16:9

 

Reynold Reynolds, Secret Life (2008)

16mm film transferred to video.

Digital projector, media player, stereo sound, 7 mins, looped 16:9

 

(Middle area)

 

Reynold Reynolds, Six Easy Pieces (2010)

(2 channel projection) 16mm film transferred to video.

Digital projector, media player, stereo sound, 7 mins, looped 16:9

 

(Back room)

 

Kevin Cooley, Skyward (2012),

Digital projection onto the ceiling.

Short throw projector, computer, HD video, stereo sound, surround speakers. 7 mins looped, 16:10

5 + 1 AP

 

Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolly, Burn (2002),

Digital projection of a 16mm film.

Digtal projector, DVD, stereo sound, 12 mins looped. 4:3.