VTAPE AND IMAGES OFF-SCREEN PRESENTATION
Rib Gets In the Way (Final Thoughts, Series Three)
Steve Reinke (with Jessie Mott)
Canadian Premiere
IN THE BACHIR/YEREX PRESENTATION SPACE
@401 Richmond St. W., 4th floor
Opening Reception, artist will be present
Friday, April 13, 2018, 4:30-7:00pm
Doors at 4:30pm, Screening starts at 5pm
Conversation between Reinke and Ottawa-based writer and curator Adam Barbu to follow the screening
Exhibition runs April 12-May 11, 2018
Open Monday – Friday, 11:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday, April 14, 11:00am – 5:00pm
Steve Reinke is a maximalist. In his 30 years as a maker of moving images, he has never hesitated to show all and to tell all. From The Hundred Videos – all made before he was 30 – right up to the present, Reinke speaks to the body, to death and to this certainty about the end that gives shape to our lives on the way.
Rib Gets in the Way (Final Thoughts, Series Three) is Reinke at his most epic scale. Here his irreverence is so monumental as to be read as almost normal. Of course he will present an animated version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885), that parable on the death of god. In Reinke’s world this is almost inevitable. Believing as he does that by 2040 it will have become a children’s book, Reinke’s talking animals make perfect sense. And of course, he will illuminate Kanye West’s Blood on the Leaves, which leads with Nina Simone’s cover of Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday’s iconic 1939 song about lynching, with a text that opens the body “like a seamstress opening up a pant-leg”, a text that reads like stream-of-consciousness from a linguist performing an autopsy.
Rib Gets in the Way is a mixture of appropriated clips – a lecture by Jacques Lacan from YouTube, a George Kuchar video, macro close-up flowers in super slow-motion – and his own footage, all accompanied by Reinke’s signature voice-over (sharing that he’s allergic to pollen but is okay with semen), combined with precisely chosen pop music clips whose lyrics point in all the right directions: “..come outa your body”, and “go missing”
Rib Gets in the Way, a collaboration with Jessie Mott who did the hand drawn animations throughout, was featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. This exhibition at Vtape will also include a number of Reinke’s text drawings.
Steve Reinke was born in the Ottawa Valley in 1963. He received his BFA from York University in 1984 and his MFA from NSCAD in 1995. During the 1990s he was active in Toronto’s artist-run centres, most particularly YYZ and Pleasure Dome. He has taught at the University of Western Ontario, Cal Arts, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and the University of Illinois Chicago. He is currently associate professor of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University. He has an extensive national and international exhibition history. Solo exhibitions include the Power Plant and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Threadwaxing Space (New York), Argos (Brussels), Lux (London) and Gallery 400 (Chicago). Solo screenings: Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Gallery of Canada, Cinematheque Ontario, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Film Festival, and many others. In 2006 he was awarded the Bell Award in Video Art. He has co-edited several books including “Lux: A Decade of Artists’ Film and Video” (with Tom Taylor), “The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema” (with Chris Gehman) and “Blast Counterblast” (with Anthony Elms). In 2004, he published “Everybody Loves Nothing: Video 1996—2004” with Coach House. A collection of his writing, “The Shimmering Beast” was published in 2011 by Coach House/Gallery 400/white walls. His video work is in distribution with Vtape (Toronto) and he is represented by Isabella Bortolozzi (Berlin).
Images Festival Co-Presentations:
“What Weakens the Flesh Is the Flesh Itself”
Steve Reinke and James Richards
Sunday, April 15, 2018, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave
Canadian Artist Spotlight: Steve Reinke
Monday, April 16, 2018, 9:00pm – 11:00pm
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave