FILM MATTERS
30 April – 20 May 2010
Curated by Barbara Piwowarska
www.beton7.com
Tony Conrad, Liam Gillick, Dan Graham, William E. Jones, Silvia Kolbowski,
Zofia Kulik / KwieKulik, Jeff Preiss, Józef Robakowski, Mel Brooks
Does the matter of film matter?
You can smash it, you can kill it, you can redeem it.
Matter is the wound of the work.
This is a story about disappointment with the material.
Assuming that "matter" is something between a thing and representation, Film Matters examines the dialectics of the two titled matters – including negotiation between the double meaning of the word – material and content.
With the participation of non-filmic and filmic artists it attempts an overview of the critical and conceptual gestures of disappointment with material, presenting works in which form is reduced or minimized to its matter, and approached from unusual points of departure.
All of the films in the exhibition keep their distance from the formal apotheosis of filmic language (they are anty-filmic or even pickled in a jar), revealing filmic traps, holes and wounds, with a special interest in the material and performative potential of destruction and reconstruction. At the end of the story is the oldest and funniest film in the exhibition from 1963: Mel Brooks' and Ernest Pintoff's Oscar-winning animation The Critic constituting the unique marriage of a spectacular formal victory and its total failure.
Monday – Friday: 14.00-21.00
Saturday: 14.00-18.00
The exhibition is dedicated to Vilmos Zsigmond and Christina Dimitriadis, and it is scheduled to run parallel to a series of events in Athens: Art Athina International Contemporary Art Fair (13-16 May) and IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art congress (13-16 May).
Project organised in collaboration with:
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw
Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Athens
BETON7
Centre for the Arts
7 Pydnas str.
Votanikos 11 855
Athens, Greece
www.beton7.com
Images:
1. Mel Brooks & Ernest Pintoff
Mel Brooks, The Critic, 1963, 35 mm animation transferred to DVD, sound, 4 min. Created and narrated by Mel Brooks, Directed and produced by Ernest Pintoff, A Pintoff-Crossbow Production / Columbia Pi
2. Tony Conrad
Pickled E.K. 7302-244-0502, 2006,16 mm film stock preserved in pickling jar with vinegar, vegetables and spices, 17.1 x 10.2 x 10.2 cm, Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York
