Film Lost, Found, and Recycled
By mining the past history of film for their artwork–both its images and ephemera–artists Suzanne Kosmalski, Coleman Miller, Christy Oates, Adam Sekuler, and Matt Bakkom create new contexts, even new forms by which we can see cinema. Recycling images from found footage and classic films or crafting new objects and conditions under which the prints are screened, these artists infuse new life into the work.
In one of her most recent video installations Show/Down (2006) (on view in the MCAD/McKnight Artists exhibition through August 13 in the MCAD gallery), Suzanne Kosmalski excises violent images from westerns, chosen primarily from films dating from the 1940s to 1980. Projected on two connected screens placed in a corner of the room, the violent sections of these movies play out on unsynchronized video loops. Taken together, these film clips represent the different cultural experiences of Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, and European settlers comprising the loaded history of the West. Kosmalski’s selection of images in these film pieces is reminiscent of the clips shows of Chuck Workman; Show/Down’s sense of flow and movement, in particular, is masterful—shots ring out from several men on horseback, men fall from cliffs, others shoot from close range.