Shimon Attie "Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack"

Jack Shainman Gallery

poster for Shimon Attie "Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack"

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Racing Clocks Run Slow: Archaeology of a Racetrack is a 3-channel high definition video installation, 18 minutes in length, with surround sound, that commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Bridgehampton Auto Race Track. This track played a special national and international role in motor racing in the United States before it closed in the early 1990s in the face of rampant development of the surrounding area. In its hey day, though primarily amateur,many well known drivers raced at Bridgehampton, including Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Paul Newman, and others. Attie filmed approximately 70 individuals whose lives intersected at the former track – racecar drivers, spectators, flaggers, pit crew, paparazzi, and racing officials, to create a kind of de-contextualized ballet loosely based on the law of physics for which time slows down for very fast moving objects. Racing Clocks Run Slow lies at the intersection between the static and moving image. Employing no digital effects, actors or photographic stills, Attie filmed individuals in static poses as they played themselves in their former roles at the racetrack. He captured their gestures and expressions while filming them on an unseen moving stage set within a black void. Individuals were illuminated by a complex lighting set up that created a delicate and beautiful play of light and shadow reminiscent of Old Master paintings. The piece’s soundtrack includes original sound recordings made at the track during the 1960s. Attie uses the form of dynamic, moving tableaux vivants as a way to distill how human memory inflects notions of speed and velocity.

Shimon Attie is well known for his installations that incorporate projected photography and other contemporary media into and onto architectural sites. His past works have given visual form to memory and the human imagination by animating public sites with images of their lost histories, and in more recent years, as the current exhibition attests, by creating multiple-channel video installations. Attie’s work explores questions of memory, place, and identity and the themes of layered and buried histories.

Media

Schedule

from September 04, 2008 to October 04, 2008

Opening Reception on 2008-09-05 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Shimon Attie

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    Reviews

    Alex Callender tablog review

    Blueprint to Fabricating Memories

    Video artist Shimon Attie and photographer Roe Ethridge offer up two different, but equally striking paths to exploring identity and memory.

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