Truth: 24 frames per second

The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) presents the first major exhibition in the Museum’s history dedicated to artists’ film and video. Truth: 24 frames per second brings together 24 visionaries and over six decades of work. Inspired by the DMA’s pioneering interests in this area, the exhibition takes its title and focus from French film director Jean-Luc Godard’s well-known statement, “cinema shows truth at the rate of 24 frames per second.”

The artists included in the show draw our attention to marginalized or excluded societal positions, and challenge the powers that may be keeping them hidden or silenced. They are not suggesting that filmic representations are unequivocally true, but that they can frame reality and therefore effectively participate in a meaningful construction of it. The exhibition is designed around three filmic techniques—appropriation, documentary, and montage—that have been selected to confront the viewer with actual pieces of reality within a particular frame. These approaches have been chosen to create rich combinations, not as the neutral picturing of reality but as a way of coming to terms with it.

Participating artists include Ant Farm, Dara Birnbaum, Mark Bradford, James Coleman, Phil Collins, Bruce Conner, Willie Doherty, Omer Fast, Morgan Fisher, Coco Fusco & Paula Heredia, Tatiana Gaviola, John Gerrard, Catherine Gund & Zoe Leonard, Arthur Jafa, Steve McQueen, Shirin Neshat, Pratibha Parmar, Ben Rivers, Rachel Rose, Anri Sala, Chick Strand, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Anne Tallentire, and Rosemarie Trockel.

On view through January 28, 2018, the exhibition is curated by the DMA’s Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Gavin Delahunty with The Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art Anna Katherine Brodbeck.
 

Public programs

Artist talk
Thursday, October 19, 7pm, Horchow Auditorium
Artists Ben Rivers and Anne Tallentire will be in conversation with DMA Senior Curator Gavin Delahunty

Panel discussion
Thursday, January 25, 7pm, Horchow Auditorium
"State of the Arts: New Media and the Future of Art”
KERA National Public Radio’s Jerome Weeks will be joined by artist John Gerrard and local art leaders to discuss how new media is ushering in a new era of making, displaying, and conserving art.
 

Exhibition catalogue
The 208-page, full-color catalogue, designed by Miko McGinty and co-published by the Dallas Museum of Art and Yale University Press, includes original essays by Gavin Delahunty and Anna Katherine Brodbeck with additional texts by Bruce Conner; Morgan Fisher; Patricia Mellencamp; Chick Strand; Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet; Tatiana Gaviola and Kelly Filreis; Pratibha Parmar; Dara Birnbaum and Hans Ulrich Obrist; Zoe Leonard and Sarah Schulman; Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Ulrike Groos; Anri Sala, Massimiliano Gioni, and Michele Robecchi; Shirin Neshat and Gerald Matt; Phil Collins and Suzanne Weaver; Ben Rivers; Charles Wylie; Steve McQueen and Adrian Searle; Omer Fast; Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith; Mark Bradford and Anita Hill; Rachel Rose and Aily Nash; Arthur Jafa and Antwaun Sargent; and Ben Eastham.

Truth: 24 frames per second is organized by the Dallas Museum of Art. Generous support provided by Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Thomas W. Lentz; TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; and Culture Ireland. Air transportation provided by American Airlines.

The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.