Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact

Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact surveys the pervasive influence of classic Hollywood cinema in contemporary artistic practice.

The reimagining and recycling of Hollywood movie iconography in contemporary art, and the way that movies live on in our personal and cultural memories, are explored in the exhibition Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact, opening on November 7, 2015 at Museum of the Moving Image. Organized by independent curator and scholar Robert M. Rubin, the exhibition includes works of over 40 artists and directors that dissect, appropriate, and redefine some of the past century’s most iconic films through photography, drawing, sculpture, print, and video. They are joined by a selection of rare film ephemera re-positioned as artworks, ranging from costume designs for Apocalypse Now to the complete original key book stills from The 39 Steps. With a nod to the “walkers,” or zombies, from the TV series The Walking Dead, the exhibition’s title references the lingering power of film detritus on the imagination of the living.

Of the many forms of media that arose in the 20th century, there is perhaps none more enduring than Hollywood cinema. In the 21st century, as films are distributed digitally in movie theaters and beyond, increasingly on screens smaller than a postcard, images and clips from films become carriers of memes and diverge from the source material. With the Walkers exhibition, curator Robert M. Rubin asks, “If the 20th century was the century of the moving image, and the 21st century is the century of the digital image, what happens to all those celluloid signs in a virtual world?”

The titular “Walkers” pays a lighthearted homage to the reanimated zombies depicted in the notable television series The Walking Dead, referencing the rich afterlives of iconic Hollywood imagery in circulation today. In this vein, the exhibition engages the role classic Hollywood film has occupied in the public imagination.

The exhibition is accompanied by a screening series, The Hollywood Classics behind Walkers, presented in the Museum’s Sumner M. Redstone Theater. Select films will be introduced by artists Pierre Bismuth, Tom Sachs, and Guy Maddin.

Organized by independent curator Robert M. Rubin. A 290-page hard cover catalogue featuring a curatorial essay by Rubin will also be available.

Artists on view:
Nada Ackel, Francis Alÿs, Richard Avedon, Fiona Banner, Saul Bass, Cindy Bernard, Pierre Bismuth, John Bock, Jim Campbell, Gregory Chatonsky, Gregory Crewdson, Brice Dellsperger, Jeff Desom, John Divola, Mark Flood, Aurélien Froment, Michel Gondry, Douglas Gordon, Robert Heinecken, Gregor Hildebrandt, Alex Israel, Larry Johnson, Isaac Julien, Martin Kippenberger, Agnieszka Kurant, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Guy Maddin, Mary Ellen Mark, Adam McEwen, Ivan Messac, Kristen Morgin, Bill Morrison, Richard Mosse, Simon Norfolk, Richard Prince, Nicolas Provost, Bernard Rancillac, Tom Sachs, Manuel Saiz, Adam Savage, Hans Schabus, Leanne Shapton, John Stezaker, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Piotr Uklanski, Ming Wong, Mario Ybarra Jr.