Postcards from Rome

2012

“Postcards from Rome” is composed of five single-channel video pieces ranging in length from 3 minutes to 12 minutes that are edited together so they can be viewed sequentially on the screen outside the UNM Art Museum. Each of the five videos begins with my hands holding a postcard with an image of Italian art. When the card is turned over, in lieu of a personal handwritten message, video footage is revealed, with each short piece featuring a protagonist attempting to reenact or initiate a response to the artistic masterpiece at hand.

In 2012 I was offered the opportunity to spend a year in Rome with my family. As a result, the works of ancient, Renaissance, and Baroque masters became a part of my everyday life as I moved around the city. “Postcards from Rome” reflects the profound inspiration I found in the works of great historical masters while also exploring the very real possibility of becoming overwhelmed and intimidate by their virtuosity. Each piece in the sequence utilizes only the most basic studio materials – paper and charcoal – and employs simple video editing techniques to address not only the wonder, by also the feelings of inadequacy that artists, at all points in their careers, experience when confronted by the works of their predecessors. Additionally, these videos explore issues of scale and how the most awe-inspiring masterpiece can be reappropriated into the mass-produced and entirely digestible form of the postcard.

Exhibition Venues:

University of New Mexico Art Museum, Video Screen, February – May, 2013, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Art Claims Impulse, August 2013, Berlin, Germany