"Street" and "Pendulum" by James Nares

May 10, 2017 to September 03, 2017

This exhibition features two complementary video works from early and later stages of artist James Nares' career. Both were filmed in the streets of New York. Pendulum (1976), shot in black-and-white Super 8, follows a wrecking ball swinging slowly back and forth down an alley in TriBeCa. As art critic Blake Gopnick wrote when the piece was featured in PS1's 2015 "Greater New York" show: "Pendulum once spoke of the abandonment of much of New York; there were whole neighborhoods where an artist could swing a giant sphere without anyone much noticing. Its wrecking ball stood for decay and demolition, and for disappearing heavy-metal technologies. Seen today, however, it seems to speak of the destruction, and posh reconstruction, of the very urban fabric where it once could swing free. The film seems to predict the loss of the setting that gave it life." About Nares' Street, a mesmerizing 61-minute slow-motion study of New York street life made in 2011, The New York Times wrote: "It's not often that you find a gallery filled with people transfixed by a contemporary video at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, But that's what I discovered at Street...a ravishing video projection ... by the artist James Nares."

Nares' work is included in a number of public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. In 2008, Anthology Film Archives hosted a complete retrospective of his films and videos. In Spring 2014, Rizzoli published the first monograph dedicated to James Nares' work in painting, sculpture, film and video  over the last four decades. Nares' video Street, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was the centerpiece for a 2013 exhibition he curated for the museum from their collection on the subject of street photography. 

This exhibition is made possible by a JSMA Academic Support Grant. 

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