P.S.1 is pleased to present Burt Barr: Recent Work, an exhibition that showcases four new works by the New York-based artist. With themes drawn from nature and culture, Barr's low-tech and deliberately understated videos effectively heighten our awareness of time passing. This exhibition is on view from September 21, 2006 through January 22, 2007.
In Summer 2005 Looped (2005), which debuts here, Barr turns the camera on the idyllic setting of a yard behind a shingled house on Long Island. Rivulets of water that run over and distort this scene of the artist relaxing on a bench set amidst grass and trees lend a hallucinatory quality to an otherwise uneventful sequence. Barr achieved this "special" effect by shooting into a mirror onto which he also aimed a sprinkler gun.
Nature once again provides the setting for Fall (2003), which features two turtles mating in the rain. The rich colors of the turtles' patterned shells and the background vegetation contribute to the drama of this slow-paced event. Moving indoors to the more rarefied world of the artist's studio, Watching The Paint Dry: Red (2005) and Watching the Paint Dry: Blue (2005), shown here for the first time, allow visitors to engage in this proverbial activity by watching larger-than-life images of brushstrokes.
Burt Barr (b.1938) began to make videos in the mid-1980s. Witty and formally elegant, some of his past works such as Dolly Shot Twice (2000), The Long Dissolve (1998), and Focus Elizabeth (2000) pun both verbally and visually on conventions of filmmaking. Others such as The Mile Running Time 7:25 (2003), August (1999), and The Pool (1993) employ artists and curators as actors, creatively recasting members of the artistic community in New York.
Burt Barr has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Platform Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Graphicstudio, Tampa are among the institutions which have hosted exhibitions of his work. He is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Burt Barr: Recent Work is organized by P.S.1 Director Alanna Heiss.
