50,000 Beds
A Project by Chris Doyle
July 20 to September 23, 2007
For more information about the project please visit www.50000beds.net
Question: What happens when you turn forty-five video artists loose in forty-five hotel rooms across the State of Connecticut? Answer: the exhibition 50,000 Beds.
On three consecutive nights in July, at three different art venues, the video installation 50,000 Beds will open. This ambitious project, the brainchild of artist Chris Doyle, marks the first collaboration between Connecticuts premier contemporary art exhibition spaces: The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Artspace in New Haven, and Real Art Ways in Hartford. The three organizations selected Doyles proposal for 50,000 Beds because its scope, themes, and compelling subject matter reflect the combined mission of the three venuesto exhibit the best in contemporary art.
Doyle has commissioned forty-five different artists to make short videos, each set in a different hotel, motel, or inn across Connecticut. The exhibition focuses on the hotel room as a site filled with narrative potential. Familiar yet foreign, a hotel room combines experiences of both intimacy and anonymity. The short videos will show a diverse range of artistic responses and themesfrom fiction to documentary to a consideration of the relationship between travelers who stay in hotels and the laborers who work in them.
The videos will be shown in specially-designed multi-screen galleries at each of the three venues. In order to fully appreciate the project and see all forty-five videos, viewers will be encouraged to visit each venue during the summer. Artspace will host the first opening on Friday, July 20, from 6 to 8 pm (on view through September 15); Real Art Ways will debut its selection of videos on Saturday, July 21, from 6 to 9 pm (on view through September 23), and The Aldrichs installation will open on Sunday, July 22, from 3 to 5 pm (on view through September 3). Artist Chris Doyle will be at all three receptions and available for interviews.
50,000 Beds was realized with the support of the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, the National Endowment for the Arts, the LEF Foundation, and the Furthermore program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. The project has also been made possible by the generous donation of equipment by Aventek and rooms by the participating hotels, motels, and inns across Connecticut.
Multidisciplinary artist Chris Doyles work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Mu-seum of Art, and P.S.1. Participating artists include: Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Amy Barrett, David Borawski, Tyler Coburn, Liz Cohen, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Jorge Colombo, Moyra Davey and Jason Simon, Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, David Ellis, Melissa Friedling, Neil Goldberg, Gene Gort, Jacqueline Goss and Andrew Gori, Brent Green, Oliver Herring, Aaron Katz, Nina Katchadourian, Braden King, Simon Lee and Jim White, Joshua Marston, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Paul McGuirk, Megan Michalak, Jeffrey Miller, Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, Laurel Nakadate, Adam Niklewicz, Shannon Plumb, John Pilson, J Morgan Puett, Tim Rutili, John Sanchez, Dread Scott, Gil Scullion, Grzegorz Surman, Eve Sussman, Jacqueline Tarry and Brad McCallum, Erika Van Natta, Anne Weber, Judi Werthein, Chris Wilcha, Pawel Wojtasik and Terry Berkowitz, Amy Yoes, and Marina Zurkow.
Contact: Pamela Ruggio
Phone: (203) 438-4519
Email: pruggio@aldrichart.org
www.50000beds.net