Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film

		Exhibition Information Date: April 17 - September 11, 2005 Place: Galleries 4, 5, 6 View all associated images View this event in the Walker Calendar
		Image: Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy , 1999 16 mm film transferred to digital video disc Collection Walker Art Center, Butler Family Fund, Justin Smith Purchase Fund, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2000

This exhibition looks at the phenomenal proliferation of moving-image material being produced by artists today, and asks why moving images have taken on such an important role in artists’ practices since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bringing together film, video, painting, sculpture, and photography, this exhibition is a meditation on the ever-changing nature of contemporary art and its relationship to the ephemeral present.

Featuring work by Doug Aitken, Chantal Akerman, Rineke Dijkstra, Fischli and Weiss, David Hammons, Craigie Horsfield, Derek Jarman, Bruce Nauman, Philippe Parreno, and Jeff Wall, this exhibition is conceived as a "promenade" in which the audience becomes the main protagonist of a movie without a camera. Notions of dislocation, relocation, identity, urban space, and humanism, across cultures and disciplines, metaphorically and literally, are at the center of this exhibition that critically questions the limits of art and movie experiences, that challenges categories such as fiction and documentary, while re-asserting the preeminence of art as an emotional, moving, though conceptual, experience.

The installation features Akerman's Walker-commissioned Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman's "D'Est" (1993/1995), as well as the recently acquired large-scale installation by Bruce Nauman, Mapping the Studio II with colorshift, flip, flop & flip/flop (Fat Chance John Cage) All Action Edit (2001).

Major Support for Shadowland: An Exhibition as a Film has been provided by Atari and Best Buy.

The installation of the Walker Art Center's collection is made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.