The entryway to “California Video” initiated a discourse into the art form by posing John Baldessari’s post-modern challenge: "I Will Not Make Any Boring Art." The challenge was then repeated and heightened by a cavalcade of riches, hours upon hours of moving imagery made with PortaPaks, surveillance cameras, VHS, HD, and multimedia in several dimensions. Featuring the work of 58 artists and collaborative teams, “California Video” ran the gamut from monitors attached to headphones to projection screens to TV sets submerged in water. From introspective to in-your-face, from luscious to ludicrous, the intelligently installed exhibit cogently displayed one of today’s most underrepresented artistic modalities.
Several single channel videos shown on smaller monitors proved as attention-grabbing as anything more elaborate. In "Chicken on Foot" Nina Sobell investigated the ontological by smashing an egg on her knee to create a reflex-response reveal of her foot plunged into a wriggling, de-feathered hen. "In The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd," Arthur Ginsburg “mediated” the complex love story of a drug-addicted “occasional porn star” and her bisexual husband. And Paul McCarthy fashioned an hour-long gestalt by employing peculiar props and effects (a fish, a spool of celluloid, a broomstick, and his trademark insane squeals) in Stomach of the Squirrel.
Major highlights of the show included T. R. Uth Co./Ant Farm’s "The Eternal Frame," a meticulous re-make of their earlier JFK assassination détournement; Hilja Keading’s sumptuous multi-unit installation "Backdrop;" and Joe Rees’ brilliant "Target Video 77" series of punk rock antecedents to MTV. And "Marks" by Skip Arnold recorded the artist creating painterly scuffs with his own blood and boots as he propelled his body around a small white room until knocking himself unconscious.
“California Video” was unfortunately lacking in works by many of California’s younger video artists, but curator Glenn Phillips’ otherwise discerning survey was far from boring.
(Published in The Magazine. September, 2008)
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