VIVID exhibition: ECSTATIC (13 May-18 June)

ECSTATIC | 13 May – 18 June 2011
open Thu-Sat, 12-5pm (admission free)

Artists: Abramović/ Ulay, Companis, Mark Leckey, Carolee Schneemann, Elisa Sighicelli, and Andy Warhol.

VIVID presents ECSTATIC, a visual and sensory season of moving image works and intervention exploring heightened emotions and altered states.

Carolee Schneemann. Meat Joy (1964). Image courtesy the artist.

EXHIBITION PROGRAMME
(Fri 13 May – Sat 18 June | open Thu-Sat, 12-5pm | admission free)

Turner prize winner Mark Leckey’s Parade (2003), is a compulsive repetition of images swirling past the silhouette of the artist. The subjects in Leckey’s video works lose themselves in the image, the music, in visual excess. They dress up, drop out. In Parade, the procession of images are suffused in a chemical haze; evocative of the garish neon impressions of the city at night-time.

Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy (1964) has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, and a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is toward the ecstatic– shifting and turning between tenderness, wilderness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent.

In Relation in Space (1976) Abramović/ Ulay (1976) approach each other from different sides of the space and collide in the middle. The piece was the first in a series of provocative, ritualistic performances entitled ‘Relation Work’, which explored extreme states of consciousness and their relationship to architectural space.

Exciting young Italian artist Elisa Sighicelli presents Untitled (The Party is Over) (2009), in which fireworks explode against the night. Edited in reverse with a hypnotic rhythm that induces daydreaming, this video could be the depiction of a journey in a time machine.

Andy Warhol‘s Blow Job (1964) is a masterpiece of the complexities of voyeurism and duration. The 36-minute film shows a young man apparently receiving oral sex, the head and shoulders are tightly framed; and the actor is still, almost vacuous.  Occasionally self aware, his primary expression is one of boredom. Off screen space must be imagined by the viewer.

PREVIEW
(Fri 13 May | 6-8pm | admission free)
Ecstatic launches on Friday 13 May, 6-8pm, with ULTRAVIOLENCE I, a new commission and live intervention from Companis. This thoroughly immersive experience aims to assault the senses using fluorescence, intensely coloured light, sound and gesture. Marvel at the surreal, edible landscape and adorn yourself in white, if you dare!

DISCUSSION & SCREENING
(Sat 04 June |  5-7pm | admission free)
They Are Here presents Reflections on The Stendhal Syndrome, a psychosomatic condition that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. Taking Graziella Magherini’s text The Stendhal Syndrome as a starting point, collective practice They Are Here will present testimonies and gather video evidence of this condition which they will present alongside a selection of related readings.

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VIVID | 140 HEATH MILL LANE | BIRMINGHAM | B9 4AR
T: 0121 766 7876 | E: info@vivid.org.uk | http://www.vivid.org.uk | Click here for directions

VIVID gratefully acknowledges support from Arts Council England and The Bond Company.