Sean Snyder
21 June to 2 September 2007
sala rekalde
Alameda Recalde, 30
Bilbao 48009 (Spain)
Sean Snyder’s exhibition at sala rekalde brings together a series of recent projects outlining his research based artistic practice.
Having worked with extensive case studies involving the ways ideology and the media shape architecture and urban planning, Snyder’s recent work has focused on the processes of the media, visual aspects of political representation and the actual mechanics of image production.
The projects presented in sala rekalde, focus on these recent developments in Snyder’s work. The exhibition outlines the artist’s methodology and use of archives, opening up source material to the viewers examination.
Works in the exhibition include:
Analepsis (2003-2004) is a video that works with the depiction of location in satellite television news broadcasts. The short sequences are comprised of re-establishing shots (reminders or updates on scene changes) used to visually orient viewers to the geographic location of a report. The footage, isolated from sound and narrative, is edited into a continuum according to camera techniques, exposing the cinematic language inherent in news coverage.
The Site (2004-2005) is a text and image based work that analyses various reports produced by governmental information services and western news media upon the capture of Saddam Hussein. Overlapping accounts and visual evidence produce similar, but inconsistent depictions of a restricted place and incident that no longer exists in reality. Questions of accessibility, timing and the relation of reporters to their subject bring into question the newsworthiness of the material.
Untitled, (Archive Iraq) (2003-2005) consists of thematically grouped amateur images produced by military forces and contractors excavated from digital file-sharing sites on the Internet. Exposing a layer of what would remain largely unseen pictures, overt representations of war and violence are excluded, focusing on the banal subjects of amateur photography. Presenting a perspective different from that of the embedded reporter, the selected subjects evoke notions of tourist, classical and criminal photography.
Casio, Seiko, Sheraton, Toyota, Mars (2004-2005) is a video essay that combines still images and video footage from amateur, governmental and photojournalistic sources with an essayist commentary. Exploring the conventions and ethics of photojournalism, the video outlines decades of foreign corporate involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Schema (Television) (2005-2007) is an ongoing project that questions televisions authoritativeness as a source of information. Working with categorical indexes of programming themes from satellite television, the video utilizes the potential of the remote control as a device of unpredictable montage. Using Dziga Vertov’s (with Rodchenko’s subtitles) silent newsreels (Kino Pravda) from the 1920s as a formal and editing model, the video emphasizes impossibility of attributing truthfulness to the moving image.
Optics.Compression.Propaganda (2006-2007) is the general subheading for a series of experiments working with image production and the role visual technologies play in the construction of ideology. The Carl Zeiss Archive serves as a conceptual framework for the project, illustrating the importance of optical devices in recent history.
Sean Snyder was born in Virginia Beach, USA in 1972. He lives and works in Berlin and Kiev. He has exhibited extensively with solo exhibitions at the Secession, Vienna, Portikus, Frankfurt, De Appel, Amsterdam, Neue Kunsthalle, St. Gallen, and Lisson Gallery, London.
To accompany the exhibition, sala rekalde will publish a book with essays by Magali Arriola, Olga Bryukhovetska and a conversation between Sean Snyder and Leire Vergara.
From June 21st to July 29th, the Abstract Cabinet of sala rekalde will be showing the group exhibition If you go, write me when you get there, within the framework of Periferiak07, a programme of activities with base in Bilbao.
This exhibition corresponds with the second part of an already begun workshop in the civic centre of San Francisco, Bilbao. Taking the practice of editing as the subject matter, this proposal adopts a mixed form of workshop and exhibition. The overall compilation will offer a spatial and conceptual framework in which public presentations and closed sessions can take place, and pooling videos, installations, photographs, drawings, publications and objects, offered by five artists and collectives: Discoteca Flaming Star, Karl Larsson/Frans Josef Petersson, Jon Mantzisidor, Peter Piller and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina.
Parallel with this exhibition, there will be a series of presentations, performances and conferences.
For further information please contact:
Constanza Erkoreka, Press Officer
Tel:(+34) 94 406 87 07
Fax: (+34) 94 406 87 54
salarekalde@bizkaia.net