The True Collection is a private holding of cutting-edge art assembled by Seattle-based collectors William and Ruth True. Consisting of important works in video, photography, and other media by an international roster of both established and emerging artists, the collectors are steadfast in their patronage of contemporary art, daringly collecting fresh and emergent forms of art-making.
In a two-part presentation, the museum will consecutively highlight six room-sized video projections from six international artists, all selected from the True Collection. Part 1: Altered Time and Shifting Perspectives will include artists Dara Friedman, Wolfgang Staehle, and Catherine Yaas. Part 2: Entertainment and the Public Sphere will include artists Stephen Dean, Takeshi Murata, and Anri Sala.
Part 1, Altered Time and Shifting Perspectives
April 6-June 30, 2018
Niagara, 2004. Wolfgang Staehle
DVD, 60 minutes looped, with sound
Staehle shot Niagara with a video camera from the same vantage point as Fredric Church’s panoramic painting, Niagara Falls from the American Side (1867). Although 19th-century audiences and today’s audiences are vastly different, Staehle’s decidedly 21st century approach calls into question how the mechanics of digital presentation mediates our experience of nature vs. those of painting or still photography.
Government Cut Freestyle, 1998. Dara Friedman
DVD projection, 9 minutes 20 seconds, silent
From a pier on the southern tip of Miami Beach, an endless stream of civilians jump into the Government Cut, a shipping channel connecting the Atlantic to Biscayne Bay. Their graceful descents, slowed down, repeat endlessly and variously, like jets of water from a fountain.
Descent, 2002. Catherine Yass
16mm film transferred to DVD, 8 minutes 11 seconds, silent
For her film Descent, a camera was lowered to the ground from a crane over a construction site at Canary Wharf, London, through thick fog. Yass adds to the perspectival distortions by screening the film upside down.
Part 2, Entertainment and the Public Sphere
July 17 – October 6, 2018
Mixed Behavior, 2003. Anri Sala
Digital color video, 8 minutes 17 seconds, sound
A DJ, working on a rooftop during a rainstorm, appears to respond to—or even control—the chaotic fireworks exploding around him as part of the celebration on the New Year in Tirana, Albania.
Volta (with Badeira), 2003. Stephen Dean
Single channel video transferred to DVD, installation with fabric enclosure, 8 minutes 52 seconds, sound
Fabric swaths create an immersive enclosure for footage of chanting, pulsating crowds, smoke bombs and sirens at a Brazilian football match.
Monster Movie, 2005. Takeshi Murata
Single channel video transferred to DVD, 4 minutes, sound by Plate Tectonics
A shower of bright color and sound, Murata uses genre movies as raw material (in this case, 1981’s forgotten Caveman). By tweaking codec software used to compress images and other data for digital storage, Marata converts motion in the original into painterly, moving abstractions
LOCATION | The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU is located in the Crimson Cube (on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium and the CUB) on the WSU Pullman campus. The hours of our six galleries are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday. For more information please contact the museum at 509-335-1910.