ART TORRENTS: Cliff Evans - The Road to Mount Weather (2006)

Cliff Evans - The Road to Mount Weather (2006)
Sunday, March 30, 2008

Download this at KaraGarga.

Shown in 2006 at Location One in New York City. Mostly, this video shows you two of the three screens. Sorry about the columns, but the space was a lousy one for the display of this piece.

From the Location One press release:

This three-channel moving image installation (15 minute loop) is a personal artifice assembled from ideas and images found across the socio-environment of the Internet. Its form is reminiscent of historic epics as represented in cinema and in grand panoramic paintings, while also mimicking the ubiquitous technology used for website banner advertisements.

The show is curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In the catalogue that accompanies the show she writes: “It is a panoramic triptych that maps the condition of the American adolescent psyche through myriad scavenged images and a carefully calibrated soundtrack. The artist has roamed the Internet examining anxieties, phobias and obsessions, searching out subjects that often preoccupy internet surfers: conspiracy theories and surveillance.”

The Road to Mount Weather is an open animation, susceptible to hugely varied critical perspectives and interpretations. It shakes us out of our complacency. In a mock epic journey through capitalist Hell, Evans creates a baffling cascade of imagery coded in complex syntax. The large swath of information is presented in a loop shown at a slow and melodious pace. With each repeated viewing, the viewer becomes more intrigued, less complacent, finding new associations and symbols, and questioning the final meaning of the narrative.

Evans is one of a number of artists who have mined the form and content of appropriation and photomontage in their work. Among his notable predecessors are Georges Braque and the Dadaists. Images are treated almost like found objects, obtained from the vast reference library that is today’s Internet. They are cut up and scrambled, scene after scene, with deliberate order and disquieting disorder ultimately finding a perfect fit in the puzzle.

Evans reflects on America’s complex geopolitical situation and its impact on mainstream news where fear is a constant. [His] ever-expansive investigation is matched by an eye for detail as well as an ability to find humorous prank subtexts...

Cliff Evans was born in Darkwood, Australia and moved to Texas when he was three. He graduated from the Museum School, Boston in 2002 and returned a year later to the Museum School for the competitive Fifth Year Program, winning the prestigious traveling scholarship from the Medici Society. Since then he has lived in New York and New Orleans. Currently he resides in Fort Green, Brooklyn.

Evans’s work has been shown at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brickbottom Gallery, the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, and the Museum School in Boston, the Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, and the Creative Research Lab in Austin, Texas.

Interview with Evans: link.