FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPENING AT THE DONALD YOUNG GALLERY
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2003
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST 5:00 - 7:30 PM

CHICAGO - The Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present the North American premiere of three new video/film installations by Rodney Graham.

Installed in the main gallery, Rheinmetall/Victoria 8, 2003 is a silent ‘documentary’ film featuring a 1930s German typewriter. The 35 mm film is projected with a massive, clattering Victoria 8 cinema style projector and specially constructed looper. Following the Méliès-style removal of the typewriter cover, the film moves from views of the entire object, to details shots, to extreme close-ups of single keys. Falling first delicately then in large amounts, a snowy white powder falls onto the typewriter and progressively fills the crevices, piles onto the keys, and obscures the typewriter. Once the typewriter has been completely transformed, the cover reappears and once more reveals the pristine typewriter and the cycle begins again. The powder-covered typewriter is also the subject of a light box which is included in the exhibition.

Graham reclaims his role as the protagonist trapped in an unending fictional narrative in A Reverie Interrupted by the Police and Loudhailer. In A Reverie Interrupted by the Police Graham plays a silent movie convict (outfitted in black and white stripes) who, accompanied by a cop, enters a proscenium stage and is guided to an upright piano before a red curtain backdrop. Seated at the piano, the handcuffed convict begins to play an improvised atonal work punctuated by an increasing number of long silences. Throughout the performance, Graham anxiously glances over his shoulder and at times slams the keyboard cover as percussive element. After a particularly long silence the cop puts his hand on the shoulder of the convict and together they exit the stage just as they entered.

In Loudhailer, Graham assumes the role of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer who is seen standing solitarily on the pontoon of a DeHavilland Beaver aircraft floating on a picturesque glacial lake. The panoramic image, was shot with two 35 mm cameras side by side so that the projected image of the plane is split down the middle. The two images are out of sync therefore affecting a slight rupture between the two halves as the plane bobs gently in the water. The cop, who wears an orange lifejacket, is speaking through the loudhailer and addressing the camera in a long, rambling text systematically interrupted by the phrase “send out a dingy,” which occurs with increasing frequency.

Rodney Graham was born in Vancouver in 1949 and his work has been exhibited internationally for over twenty years. In 2002 the Whitechapel Gallery in London organized a solo exhibition of Graham’s work which traveled to Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany and MAC Galeries Contemporain de Musées de Marseille, Marseille, France. In March of 2004 the Art Gallery of Ontario will open an exhibition of Graham’s work which will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia in 2005. A Reverie Interrupted by the Police is currently included in Outlook, the international exhibition in Athens, Greece and Rheinmetall/Victoria 8 is now on view at the Lyon Biennale.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 to 5:30 and Saturday, 11:00 to 5:30. If you would like more information, please contact Emily Letourneau at 312.455.0100.