ANNIE RATTI
EVAPORATED SEA
17 November-16 December, 2006
CURATED BY IWONA BLAZWICK
WHITE BOX
525 West 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
t: 212.714.2347
White Box is pleased to present Annie Rattis site-specific installation Evaporated Sea. Annie Rattis installation radically alters White Boxs seemingly archeological space by filling it with crystalline sea salt, challenging visitors to revise the parameters by which they view art and overturning any preconceptions they had about what constitutes an exhibition space. The floor is encrusted in salt and viewers experience the floating feeling of the sea by walking along the elevated wooden deck, allowing people to view the installation from its center. Eric Saties music combined with video images further enhances a receptive environment.
Annie Rattis Evaporated Sea is a kind of composite psychological window reflecting the appearance, disappearance, and the reincarnation of memories attached to social complexities. The rotational video images projected on three different walls of White Box are her own version of Red Balloon in New York City reminiscent of French filmmaker Lamorisses 1956 classic. In Rattis film, a lonely red balloon randomly soars through a forest of buildings in Manhattan, past Central Park and Times Square, down into China Town, with a train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in which an anonymous crowd rides the wind like a free soul. The city filled with burdens and agonies appears symbolically touched by the sight of the red balloon and finally seems to arrive at the land of tranquility. Annie Ratti has produced her video with Canadian cinematographer Christopher Walters.
Annie Ratti has been working with video, photography, installation, and literary essays to question and rethink the contemporary human and urban conflicts, states of uncertainty, and unexpected perceptual cracks born out of perpetual comings and goings from her native country of Italy to France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Catalogue
Internationally known art publisher Charta will publish a 120-page book on Annie Rattis work, including Evaporated Sea. The book includes essays written by Iwona Blazwick, Eleanor Heartney, Giorgio Verzotti, Lea Vergine, Alex Farquharson, and a conversation between Annie Ratti and Cesare Pietroiusti. The book signing will be held at White Box 6-8pm on December 14th, 2006.
White Box
White Box is a 501 [c] (3) not-for-profit organization. Exhibitions are supported in part by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
525 W. 26th Street
New York, NY 10001
t: 212.714.2347
info@whiteboxny.org
www.chartaartbooks.it/cm/agenda.asp#fresco
www.whiteboxnyc.org/2006/exhibitions/annie-ratti-evaporated-sea/
