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Weekly Selections

John Bock at REDCAT

Los Angeles, California / After reworking the 19th-century troubled artist-genius leitmotif in Dandy (2006), German artist John Bock’s latest, increasingly complex cinematic foray travels to sizzling Southern California; Los Angeles and the high desert of Joshua Tree specifically. For the feature-length video Palms (2007), which has its US-premiere here along with the artist’s trademark parade of idiosyncratic props, Bock has turned his attention to the narrative playground offered by “Sunshine Noir.” As with Bock’s previous quasi-narrative films, Palms is not primarily concerned with deconstructing ideologies of genre-specific cinematic conventions. Rather the staple of locations and stereotypes of these genres have to surrender to Bock’s cosmos of banal agrarian-low-tech contraptions and body extensions, combined with antics culled from the history of performance art, contemporary low-budget Sci-fi, and a genuine embrace of bumpkin adolescence.

Palms is on view at REDCAT, Los Angeles, 18 September – 9 November, 2008.

About this Preview

First published in October 10, 2008 by Daniel Horn.

Daniel Horn is Fillip’s Los Angeles Bureau Editor.

notes

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Weekly Selection Archives

  1. Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A. at the Hammer Museum  Los Angeles, California
  2. Global Kiosk at the Sala d’Art Jove  Barcelona, Spain
  3. Fallow at the Charles H. Scott Gallery  Vancouver, Canada
  4. Doings or Not at Hobusepea Gallery  Tallinn, Estonia
  5. John Bock at REDCAT  Los Angeles, California
  6. Ann-Sofi Sidén at Bonniers Konsthall  Stockholm, Sweden
  7. Kori Newkirk at Laxart  Culver City, California