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Clifton Childree
Orchestrated
Gestures
November
27, 2010 - January 29, 2011
Dorsch Gallery is pleased to present
Clifton Childree’s Orchestrated
Gestures, a solo show opening November 27, 2010 from
6-9pm, on view through January 29, 2011. During the Miami art
fairs (Nov. 30 - Dec. 5), we will be open 9am - 5pm with a
special performance event on Saturday December 4, 9pm -
midnight.
In
Orchestrated Gestures, Clifton
Childree will exhibit new sculptures, with film and
audio components, in the form of old arcade machines. Each of
these three machines conveys sketched-out narratives
associated with musical pieces by composers Scott Joplin,
Richard Wagner and Alexander Scriabin. Childree’s arcade games
elaborate on and combine aspects of his previous work:
grotesque slapstick, sweet silent film, self-contained arcade
games and large-scale installations that incorporate his
films.
With
Orchestrated Gestures, Childree creates his first
exhibition of stand-alone sculptures, each more fully
realizing the potential of the arcade game’s form and more
focused than his all-encompassing installations, like
Dream-Cum-Tru at Locust Projects in
2008.
The
first machine re-enacts the untimely end of ragtime composer
Scott Joplin. A blend of fact and extrapolation, Childree’s
story of Joplin is relayed by the film and its housing – the
arcade game. The film in this piece shows Childree performing
as Joplin playing piano in a bordello. The arcade built around
the film comes across as a run down version of the
strength-and-hammer game. The arcade game’s physical structure
re-enacts a part of the story that its film describes; the
story has moved the armature. Similarly, the second arcade
game acts out the story of Ludwig II of Bavaria, known as “Mad
King Ludwig,” the patron of Richard Wagner, whose music
accompanies the game. The king’s effeminate character and his
ignoble death are fodder for Childree’s exaggerations and
hyperbole – all part of the slapstick style. The third machine
crystallizes the character of co mposer Alexander Scriabin, a
hypochondriac who died when a small boil he picked at became
infected. Scriabin’s unfinished masterpiece,
Mysterium, accompanies the machine’s telling of his
story. Each of the musical pieces in this exhibition was
either unfinished or lost, one of the attenuated states of
being that Childree finds utterly beautiful.
With
these works Childree probes grey areas that elude explanation,
like the moments before death and creative mania. Familiar art
history vocabulary – mortality, madness, artistic ambition,
and the value of art patronage – falls short in describing
this work. Orchestrated Gestures resonates because it defies
such labeling.
A
brochure featuring an interview with Childree will accompany
the exhibition. View online
here
His
work will also be on view at Galerie Ernst Hilger’s booth at
the PULSE Art Fair in Miami, December 2-5, 2010.
Childree has shown his work in over 40 international
film festivals. He has shown in Miami at MAM, MoCA, Art Center
South Florida, BFI, Pulse Art Fair, FIU, Miami International
Film Festival, Florida Dance Festival and Locust Projects. He
received the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, the
Legal Art Native Seeds Grant, and the Florida Individual
Artist Fellowship, and was commissioned by The Miami
Performing Arts Center/Miami Light Project and Hilger
Contemporary Gallery. He is featured in the book Miami
Contemporary Artists and is in production on a book for NAME
publishing. He will have his first solo museum show at the
Wien Kunsthalle, summer 2011. He lives and works in Miami,
FL.
Image:
Clifton Childree
Film
still from Mysterium, 2010
Courtesy
of Dorsch Gallery, Miami
Dorsch Gallery
151 NW
24 St
Miami,
FL 33127
T +1
3055761278
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