Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman: Shadow

Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman: Shadow

Whitney Museum of American Art

Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman,
Production still from “Shadow,” 2010.
High-definition video, color, five-channel surround sound; 13:30 minutes.

October 25, 2010

Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman
Shadow

October 28, 2010 – January 23, 2011

945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY

whitney.org

Artists have long engaged with the mythology of Hollywood, creating a hybrid of art and cinema that has become an important strand of contemporary art. Shadow (2010), a video installation by Slater Bradley in collaboration with Academy Award–nominated cinematographer Ed Lachman, takes as its inspiration the unfinished Hollywood film Dark Blood (1993) for which Lachman was the cinematographer. In the film, River Phoenix plays a disturbed, young, half–Navajo widower who lives like a hermit near a nuclear testing site in the Nevada desert, waiting for the apocalypse and making kachina dolls that he believes have magic powers. Phoenix’s character’s wife died from radiation poisoning from the site. A married couple becomes stranded when their car breaks down in the desert and they are rescued by the widower, who falls in love with the woman. The film progresses to a dramatic ending in which the young man dies, but because of Phoenix’s own untimely death, the final scenes were never filmed.

Based on Lachman’s memories and impressions of filming Dark Blood seventeen years prior, Shadow constructs a prologue that imagines the widower’s life just before he meets the couple. Although it contains references to what takes place in the original film (now the future) and is haunted by Phoenix’s ghostly presence, major elements of the original—the couple, the car breaking down, the attraction of the widower to the woman—do not appear in Bradley and Lachman’s film, and parts of their story—the little girl, the deserted house, the bar—do not appear in the original. The two narratives are woven together by threads of fact and fiction whose boundaries are never made clear. The bar in Shadow was the one frequented by Phoenix while filming the original movie, for example, and the location, near the Capitol Reef in Utah, is the same as in Dark Blood. The photographs found by the widower in the prologue were discovered by chance by Lachman and Bradley in the bar. They were taken in 1993 and show Lachman and Phoenix at work on Dark Blood. In a further twist, Ben Brock, who plays Phoenix as the widower, bears an uncanny resemblance to Slater Bradley. Shadow thus becomes a triple portrait of the actor, the cinematographer, and the artist, transforming a conventional cinematic narrative into a labyrinthine tale that blurs the lines between illusion and reality, past and future.

Curated by Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator.

Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY
whitney.org

*Image above:
Collection of the artists; courtesy Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid; Max Wigram Gallery, London; Blum & Poe Gallery, Los Angeles; and Team Gallery, New York.

Advertisement
RSVP
RSVP for Slater Bradley and Ed Lachman: Shadow
Whitney Museum of American Art
October 25, 2010

Thank you for your RSVP.

Whitney Museum of American Art will be in touch.

Subscribe

e-flux announcements are emailed press releases for art exhibitions from all over the world.

Agenda delivers news from galleries, art spaces, and publications, while Criticism publishes reviews of exhibitions and books.

Architecture announcements cover current architecture and design projects, symposia, exhibitions, and publications from all over the world.

Film announcements are newsletters about screenings, film festivals, and exhibitions of moving image.

Education announces academic employment opportunities, calls for applications, symposia, publications, exhibitions, and educational programs.

Sign up to receive information about events organized by e-flux at e-flux Screening Room, Bar Laika, or elsewhere.

I have read e-flux’s privacy policy and agree that e-flux may send me announcements to the email address entered above and that my data will be processed for this purpose in accordance with e-flux’s privacy policy*

Thank you for your interest in e-flux. Check your inbox to confirm your subscription.