Raul Marroquin "The Adventures of Honey West"

Witzenhausen Gallery

poster for Raul Marroquin "The Adventures of Honey West"

This event has ended.

celebrated artist raul marroquin (bogota, 1948) is back in new york city with "the adventures of honey west", a series of photos, videos, tabletop installations and live events.

private detective honey west, played by actress anne francis, is the first female detective on television. sweet as honey, agile as a lynx, blond, tough and sexy, honey west didn’t go unnoticed to emerging artist raul marroquin, when he saw the series air on television in 1965-66…

not so long ago, the past was the past, far away and difficult to reach if one didn’t make the effort to collect it and search for it. today, we only need to open the faucet of our memories on youtube and boom!! who would have thought the past would ever be so present and easy to find as it is today? marroquin found honey west, online and digital but intact in his memory: not only could he revisit a platonic love affair of his youth, he has also been able to capture our private detective with his own smart-phone nokia n8, one of the first smart-phones with a hd camera to appear in the market and well known for its use in making short and feature films. it doesn’t stop here though, there is not only appropriation involved: by means of one of the smart-phone's apps, marroquin intervenes and breaks into the narration. the application allows the artist to add text in a comic-like fashion to photos taken with the device’s camera. the result: raw and “digitally hand-made” videos and photos where the presence of the artist is explicitly intrusive, never discrete or concealed (note the red dot on each video for instance). the advetures of honey west started off as a photo-narration project: the artist adding text onto the images he captured from youtube video stills, but it radically changed and grew when the photos where edited onto the youtube videos. a preview of these works can already be seen online (see: http://youtu.be/enlpfrafwdk): almost five decades after the show was aired, the artist has made his own narration: "the adventures of honey west", where our female detective is the sole protagonist, fighter and winner.

from the beginning of his artistic carreer raul marroquin has worked with low-cost technologies such as industrial video and cable television. since the beginning of the digital era and the arrival of mobile media, marroquin has adopted various user technologies in order to develop his work and has made of low-res aesthetics, his own language and style. for marroquin nothing is obsolete as long as it’s still recording, producing and reproducing images. today, the artist interacts with the world only through low-resolution cameras incorporated in cell phones (snapshots and video), videoconferencing (skype, oovoo, google+) or live video streaming using platforms such as qik, livestream or live google hangouts, among others. the social networks and his blogs have become very importamt platforms as an extention of his television program hoeksteen live, his exhibitions or live performances. live events and live re-runs of the adventures of honey west are a crucial part of the exhibition project at witzenhausen gallery new york.

Media

Schedule

from November 08, 2012 to November 17, 2012

Opening Reception on 2012-11-08 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Raul Marroquin

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