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Engineer’s Daughter review of SOVA 2012

http://engineersdaughter.typepad.com/engineers_daughter/

Through August 25: Summer of Video Art 2012 – Futuring the Past, Pasting the Future at Krowswork. This show is nothing less than a crash course in what is most inspiring in contemporary video art. Julia Litman-Cleper’s crudely-mapped organs grow and contract in response to the movements of the viewer and are juxtaposed poignantly with Evie Leder’s nearby Object Number One, a single shot of a naked man seemingly floating in space. Farley Gwazda’s amazing animation Model Earth (Part One) holds court in the back corner of that same room with a hypnotic meld of renderings of scientific processes, glitchtastic mosaics of assaultive color, and a perfectly pitched soundtrack. I also loved Anne McGuire and Karla Milosevich’s uncanny and slyly humorous installation Classic Rock with its recontextualization of a very familiar tune, and I spent much quality time on the floor of the gallery with a projection piece by Paul Clipson that inhabits two oil barrels near the front entrance. Liz Walsh and Dickson Schneider invite audience participation with live video mixing and a clever take on QR codes respectively, while Torsten Zenas Burns masterfully blends the macabre and the transcendent in his brand new video Familiars. Sofia Cordova and Will Erokan each use the format of the video triptych to great effect, Cordova to create a journey through sound and landscape and Erokan through memory itself. And last but definitely not least I encourage you to stand as close as you dare to Christine Ancalmo’s minute-long piece Witch Doctor and let it do its thing on your senses. The perfect time to stop by? This Friday night, when Krowswork will be hosting a special program of screenings and live performances in conjunction with the exhibition.