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| Carrick Bell Once You Learn to Love that Knife | ||||
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| Get to the Chopper | ||||
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Get to the Chopper - 1 Video Still 2009 |
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Get to the Chopper - 2 Video Still 2009 |
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Get to the Chopper - 3 Video Still 2009 |
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Get to the Chopper - 4 Video Still 2009 |
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Get to the Chopper - 5 Video Still 2009 |
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| Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins | ||||
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 1 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 2 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 3 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 4 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 5 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 6 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 7 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 8 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 9 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 10 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 11 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 12 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 13 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 14 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 15 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 16 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 17 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 18 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 19 Video Still 2009 |
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Trees Hide a Multitude of Sins - 20 Video Still 2009 |
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General Statement Once you learn to love that knife consists of two videos, Trees hide a multitude of sins and Get to the chopper. Confusing language from Bob Ross instructional videos and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, Once you learn to love that knife uses both found footage and performance for video to investigate nature as a site for man-on-man violence, as a site of escape (both from and to, always a veritable nature/retreat), and as site for abandonment (of self, social constraint, good taste, etc). Trees hide a multitude of sins is constructed entirely out of footage from the 1994 B-movie/Ice-T star vehicle Surviving the Game, an update of The Most Dangerous Game in which Ice-T is hunted as sport by a group of men. The launching point for the hunt is a scene in which Ice-T discovers his adversaries' motives, and burns down their hunting lodge as both distraction and retribution. This scene, in which Ice-T acts as a sort of vengeful anti-Prometheus, using fire to initiate agonistic narrative and social disintegration, provides the material for Trees hide a multitude of sins. The distinguishing marks of the characters have all been removed, reducing the actors to a series of flat cut-outs whose narrative propelling actions are reduced to episodic abstractions. Mimicking the Predator-effect of the eponymous film, Trees hide a multitude of sins trades in narrative excitement for crude special effects and clichéd trance-video aesthetics. Get to the chopper reduces Arnold Schwarzenegger's altruistic plea for escape to a mute formal gesture. Six lengths of landscaping lumber were converted into makeshift barber poles, green-screen green, blaze orange, and low-grade wood grain replacing red, white, and blue. The unassuming yet garish spinning poles are, in turn, projected back onto six more lengths of landscaping lumber in the gallery space. Whereas Trees hide a multitude of sins attempts to populate the screen with a euphoric density of images, Get to the chopper utilizes sculptural tactics to disperse the contents of the video field across disjointed planes, the projected objects awkwardly mapped onto their real world equivalents. The projected trajectory of the chopper blades are converted into the sloppy meanderings of a home-made reproduction of a signifier of medieval medical practices, and Arnold's attempt at escape is deflated into a hackneyed visual illusion. Carrick Bell graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Sculpture Department in 2008 with a Master of Fine Arts. Having taught for Northwestern University's Sculpture Department, he currently lives and works in Berlin. ArtExhibitionLink www.artexhibitionlink.com |
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