S i e b r e n V e r s t e e g . c o m                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         


Press Enter to Exit
Press Enter to Exit
2007
Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by New York based artist Siebren Versteeg. In describing the work, Versteeg borrows a quote from filmmaker Ken Burns brought to his attention via his Free Will Astrology Horoscope by Rob Brezsny: "We are experiencing the death of narrative," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We are all so opinionated that we don't actually submit to narrative anymore. That's the essence of YouTube: Abbreviate everything into a digestible capsule that then becomes the conventional wisdom, which belies the experience of art." (see Leo, http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/20071115.html) Through deployment of computer programming, Versteeg's practice exponentially zooms in to consider the condition Burns laments, moving from our perceptual experience of digital telecommunications inward toward the infinitesimal looping routines of code which create them. From these sliding vantage points, timelines fold in on themselves and horizons become infinitely plastic and scaleable to attention. In "Superhighway" 2007, for example, close inspection reveals a tangle of tiny lines as a vast and intricate motorcade. As in all attempts at apprehensive reasoning, forms congeal and collapse in the conjoined hands of distance and time. Central to the exhibition will be a projected work entitled "Untitled Film IV" which culls an endless stream of images into a structure referencing Chris Marker's 1962 short 'LaJeteé'. Like Marker's original, the effect is a destabilizing meditation on time. Unlike Marker, however, Versteeg's work illustrates experientially, by incorporating the dizzying qualities of real-time internet data transmission to create an ongoing narrative that ends only when we decide to look away.
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