The Hirshhorn presents an unprecedented two-part exploration of contemporary moving-image art that focuses on the ways in which the cinematic has blurred distinctions between illusion and reality. "The Cinema Effect" includes film, video and digital works by a range of influential and emerging international artists.
Organized by acting director and chief curator Kerry Brougher and associate curator Kelly Gordon, part one of "The Cinema Effect" exhibition, "Dreams," addresses film's ability to transport viewers out of their everyday lives and into states that lie between wakefulness and sleep, sending them on journeys into the darker recesses of the imagination. "Dreams" is on view from Feb. 14 to May 11. The second part of the exhibition, "Realisms," is organized by curator Anne Ellegood and associate curator Kristen Hileman. It explores the irony that in an age when documenting "real life" in moving image formats becomes ever easier, the line between fact and fiction is increasingly complicated. "Realisms" is on view from June 19 to Sept. 7.
"Today, the cinema is everywhere," explains Brougher. "It is on television, your computer screen, projected onto buildings, and carried around with you on your iPod. The cinematic is in the way we perceive the world, in the way we speak, in the way we dream. We have no need to enter a movie theater to escape into an illusory world; life itself is just like a movie."
To illustrate this phenomenon, the artists in "The Cinema Effect" appropriate vocabularies and techniques from feature films, news broadcasts, reality TV shows, video games, "manga" comics, music videos, surveillance systems and the Internet. Following tracks laid down by cinema's earliest pioneers at the end of the 19th century—the escapist, magical films of George Méliès ("Dreams") and the documentary work of the Lumière brothers ("Realisms"), the two exhibitions explore the idea that, in contemporary culture, whether something resembles fact or fiction, it remains difficult to determined reality from illusion. -- www.hirshhorn.si.edu
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#1 The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality
A friend and I have just seen this exhibit. Aside from the first part being laid out in separate rooms so unnecessarily as to make movement almost impossible, it was an assemblage of boring, unoriginal, silly, pretentious crap.
Most of the rooms did not have chairs and that was well planned as absolutely no one would want to stay in any more than the time necessary to pass through. If there had been an early exit, I would gladly have paid.
On the good side, the rooms were well ventilated.