Film UbuWebRyan Trecartin (b. 1981)
Any Ever
Trill-ogy Comp
P.opular S.ky (section ish), 2009
K-CoreaINC.K (section a), 2009
Sibling Topics (section a), 2009
Individual Films
I-Be AREA (2007) [Version française] [Versione italiana]
(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) (2006)
A Family Finds Entertainment (2004)
What's The Love of Making Babies For (2003)
Wayne's World (2003)
Yo A Romantic Comedy (2002)
Valentine's Day Girl (2001)
Kitchen Girl (2001)
Ryan Trecartin's video narratives unfold like futuristic fever dreams. Collaborating with an ensemble cast of family and friends, he merges sophisticated digital manipulations with footage from the Internet and pop culture, animations, and wildly stylized sets and performances. While the astonishing A Family Finds Entertainment (2005) has drawn comparisons to Jack Smith, early John Waters, and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Trecartin crafts startling visions that are thoroughly unique.
Kevin McGarry writes, "Ryan Trecartin has established a singular video practice that in form and in function advances understandings of post-millennial technology, narrative and identity, and also propels these matters as expressive mediums. His work depicts worlds where consumer culture is amplified to absurd or nihilistic proportions and characters circuitously strive to find agency and meaning in their lives. The combination of assaultive, nearly impenetrable avant-garde logics and equally outlandish, virtuoso uses of color, form, drama and montage produces a sublime, stream-of-consciousness effect that feels bewilderingly true to life."
Ryan Trecartin was born in 1981 in Webster, Texas. He received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island in 2004. Solo exhibitions include Any Ever, which traveled from the Power Plant, Toronto in 2009 to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2010, then to the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL in 2011; MoMA P.S.1, Long Island City, New York; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (both in 2011); Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York. His works have been seen in group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ZKM - Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia; The Eighth Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea; MIT/List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; the 2006 Biennial Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; USA Today: Works from the Saatchi Collection, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Moore Space, Miami, Florida; The Getty Center, Los Angeles; New York Underground Film Festival, New York; Chicago Underground Film Festival, Chicago; and Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, among others. -- Electronic Arts Intermix
© Ryan Trecartin, Courtesy of the Artist, Regen Projects and Sprüth Magers
Used with kind permission of Regen Projects, LA and Sprüth Magers
This title is available for exhibitions, screenings, and institutional use through Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY. Please visit the EAI Online Catalogue for further information about this artist and work. The EAI site offers extensive resources for curators, students, artists and educators, including: an in-depth guide to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving media art; A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online, a collection of essays, primary documents, and media charting EAI's 40-year history and the early years of the emergent video art scene; and expanded contextual and educational materials.