PAT O’NEILL
Solo Show
14 settembre – 22 ottobre 2016
Incontro con l’artista e screening – Cinema Trevi, Cineteca Nazionale
12 settembre
h 19,30 – 21,30
Ingresso libero fino ad esaurimento posti
La galleria Monitor, inaugura la nuova stagione espositiva con il debutto presso i suoi spazi del celebre artista e film maker, Pat O’ Neill (Los Angeles, 1939).
Considerato uno dei pionieri ed icona del cinema sperimentale americano sin dai primi anni ’60, il percorso artistico di Pat O’Neill, si articola in una ricerca completa nelle arti visive che comprende la scultura, il collage, il disegno e la fotografia.
Le sue opere si trovano nelle collezioni di prestigiose istituzioni museali quali: Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Fondatore nel 1974 della Lookout Mountain Studios, casa cinematografica dedicata principalmente agli effetti speciali, O’ Neill, durante i suoi decenni di attività come film maker, ha messo a punto tecniche di montaggio, composizione e di stampa ottica che hanno determinato una vera svolta per la storia del cinema.
Sfidando qualsiasi tipo di categorizzazione, alcuni dei film da lui realizzati tra il 1963 e il 2006 sono considerati dalla critica dei veri e propri classici: Runs Good “( 1970) ,“Down Wind”(1973) ” Saugus Series “( 1974) , Let’s Make a Sandwich (1978), ” Water and Power “(1989), ” Trouble in immagine “, ( 1996), e” The Decay of Fiction “(2002), hanno precorso, e di molto, gli effetti speciali divenuti di uso comune nell’industria filmica moderna.
Il lavoro video dell’artista losangelino non è noto solo per la perizia tecnica unica e avanguardista, ma anche per la grande eleganza visiva e visionaria.
Immagini senza soluzione di continuità in cui riecheggiano racconti tra passato e presente, miti e storie della cultura quotidiana con particolare riferimento ai paesaggi di Los Angeles con le sue zone suburbane e rurali, fanno dei lavori di O’ Neill un’arte filmica seducente.
Attraverso l’utilizzo di inversioni, blocchi, sovrapposizioni e stratificazioni con figure in movimento su più paesaggi e frammenti apparentemente arbitrari di testo narrativo, il suo lavoro video diviene anche un’esplorazione dei limiti e delle contraddizioni della tecnologia nella comunicazione con le immagini.
La ricerca scultorea di O’Neill inizia anche’ essa nei primi anni ’60 con assemblaggi surreali di legno e metallo ispirati a forme erotiche. In un momento successivo, l’artista introduce la fibra di vetro e plexiglass e con questi elementi, le forme stravaganti e suggestive, quali corna e sagome ondulate avvolte di pelliccia. In Egg on Floor (1966) e Black and White (1964) è evidente come la ricerca formale e dei materiali è per O’ Neil fondamentale, come pure nel raro corpo di collage esposti negli spazi della galleria: pur nella loro immobilità, questi lavori trasmettono la stessa densità di contenuti, la stessa energia che si percepisce guardando i suoi film. Nell’allestimento della galleria essi appariranno infatti un tutt’uno con i lavori video calati nell’atmosfera sospesa e quasi funambolica che caratterizza la ricerca dell’artista americano.
Lunedì 12 settembre in collaborazione con il CSC-Cineteca Nazionale presso il Cinema Trevi, saranno presentati tre film di Pat O’Neill, accompagnati da un incontro con l’artista moderato da Adriano Aprà, Alessandra Mammì e Annamaria Licciardello.
PROGRAMMA
ore 19,30 Easyout (1971, 9’)
a seguire incontro con Pat O’Neill
ore 20,30
Horizontal Boundaries (2008, 23’)
Starting To Go Bad (2009, 30’)
Ingresso libero fino a esaurimento posti
Cinema Trevi, vicolo del Puttarello 25, Roma
ENGLISH VERSION
PAT O’NEILL
Solo Show
September 14th – October 22nd 2016
Talk and screening – Cinema Trevi, Cineteca Nazionale
September 12th
h 7,30 – 9,30 pm
Free entrance (while seats last)
Monitor will be opening the forthcoming season with a gallery debut for renowned artist and filmmaker Pat O’ Neill (Los Angeles, 1939).
Widely regarded as one of the pioneers and iconic figures of experimental American film, since the early 1960s Pat O’Neill’s research has embraced a broad spectrum of media, from sculpture to collage, drawing and photography.
His works are currently featured in a number of prominent public collections such as the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
In 1974 O’Neill founded the Lookout Mountain film production company devoted primarily to special effects. Over several decades of career a filmmaker he has perfected editing, composition and optic printing techniques that stand as turning points in film history.
Although his films sit uncomfortably within any predefined category, several of O’Neill’s productions completed between 1963 and 2006 are ranked by critics as classics, pioneering special effects that came to be commonly used in the modern film industry much later on. These include Runs Good (1970), Down Wind (1973), Saugus Series (1974), Let’s Make a Sandwich (1978), Water and Power (1989), Trouble in the Image, (1996) and The Decay of Fiction (2002).
O’Neill’s video work is known as much for its unique technical craftsmanship as for its innovation, together with a distinctive visual and visionary elegance. A constant stream of images combines echoes of present and past, everyday culture and the Los Angeles landscape feature strongly – particularly its suburban and rural areas – for an overall effect that is utterly bewitching.
Through his use of inversion, superimposed footage and layering with figures in movement over several backgrounds and seemingly arbitrary fragments of narrative text, O’Neill pushes the limits and contradictions of technology in image communication to the extreme.
O’Neill’s first experiments with the sculpture medium also date from the early 1960s, with surreal assemblages of wood and metal inspired by erotic shapes. He later introduced glass fibre and Plexiglas to these extravagantly allusive forms – horns or undulating outlines wrapped in fur. Egg on Floor (1966) and Black and White (1964) illustrate well the importance O’Neill attaches to his research into form and materials. This is apparent also in the rare body of works that will be presented at the gallery which, although motionless, emanate the same density of content and energy as his films. The gallery will in fact be presenting the sculptures alongside O’Neill’s videos, creating a suspended – almost trance-like – atmosphere that is the hallmark of this great American artist.
Pat O’Neill Born 1939 in Los Angeles, CA, lives and works in LA
Solo shows: 2016 Pat O’Neill, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA (forthcoming); Pat O’Neill, Monitor, Rome, Italy (forthcoming) Pat O’Neill, VeneKlasen/Werner, Berlin, Germany; Pat O’Neill, Quinta do Quetzal, Vidigueira, Portugal 2015 Pat O’Neill, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, NY Pat O’Neill, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA 2013 Pat O’Neill: Horizontal Boundaries, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA 2011 Watching Abstraction in Hollywood: The Work of Pat OʼNeill, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood, CA 2008 Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2005 Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2004 Pat OʼNeill: Views From Lookout Mountain, curated by Julie Lazar, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; traveling to Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK 1999 Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, CA. 1978 Installation, Letʼs Make a Sandwich, LACE, Los Angeles, CA 1968 Plastics: LA, Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles, CA NOW Technology in Art, Esther Robles Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Group shows (selected): 2015 Artist’s Proof: Jennifer West (Special Installation), Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA 2014 Extracts and Extractions, Les Abattoirs / Frac Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France Augment This (Meditations on the Image), Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA 2011 Site As Symbol, curated by Survey West Collaborative, Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA 2010 Crises 2 Films, De Cinema Experimental Dans Les Collections Cinedoc/Paris Films Coop, Centre Pompidou, Paris Exhibition at Screening Philadelphia, PA, featuring Horizontal Boundaries 2009 Collecting History: Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA Crises de Films: 35th Anniversary of Cinema of the collections of Cinedoc/Paris Film Coop, Centre Pompidou, Paris 2008 Traces du Sacré, Centre Pompidou, Paris; traveling to Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany The Underground, Machine Projects, Los Angeles, CA Paul McCarthy: Film List, curated by Paul McCarthy, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York 2006 Los Angeles 1955-1985: The Birth of an Art Capital, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Summer of Love- Art of the Psychedelic Era, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom; 2002 Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary After Film, curated by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; travels to Nykytaiteen Museo, Helsinki, Finland and NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo, Japan; 2001 Made in California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; 1998 Mister Exacto: Carl Cheng and Pat OʼNeill, Photographic Work, University of Nevada, Reno, NV; 1996 Water and Power in Art and Film Since 1945: Hall of Mirrors, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA 1991 Water and Power film, Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 198520-20, Twentieth-anniversary exhibition for UCLAʼs Photography Department, University of California Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Cinema Immateriaux, Center Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; 1982 Frisco Cinema, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; 1979 Installation Two Sweeps, curated by Grahame Weinbren, Mount San Antonio College, Walnut, CACineprobe, Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; 970 A Plastic Presence, organized by Gerald Nordland, Jewish Museum, New York, NY; travels to Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA 1969 Electric Art, curated by Oliver Andrews, University of California Art Galleries, Los Angeles, CA; traveled to Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ.
