Acting Out/Three Videos by Three Artists
May 1 – August 1, 2010

EVIL KNIEVEL (German, born 1973) I Love America, 2006 Single channel video (and performance), 26 minutes Courtesy the artist

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY (American, born 1955) Mixed Reviews (American Sign Language), 2006 Single channel video, 30 minutes Courtesy the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, NYC ERWIN WURM (Austrian, born 1954) One Minute Sculptures, 1997 DVD, 47 minutes Courtesy the artist and Aurel ScheiblerMitte, Berlin

Acting Out takes as its cue the early low-quality videos made in the late 1960s by the pioneers of the art form as well as the emerging genre of performance art. For Bruce Nauman, William Wegman, and Vito Acconci, the video camera positioned on a tripod was essentially the audience for which the artist performed; and as such, it coolly documented the artist acting up and acting out.  Recent video works by Evil Knievel, Christian Marclay and Erwin Wurm all focus on the actions of one person: dancing, using sign language, or executing a series of seemingly senseless activities.  These artworks essentially are the reason for performances of one kind or another, with the videos themselves being simply a documentation of that performance, a video which is either directed by the artists or that the artists actually perform in themselves. Yet, even with these similarities of static camera and viewpoint, and singular human subject performing, the videos nonetheless run the gamut from poetic (Marclay), to the odd (Knievel), to the humorous (Wurm).

Organized by the Norton Museum of Art. This exhibition is made possible in part through the generosity of The William and Sarah Ross Soter Photography Fund.