Ed Atkins
15 Feb - 11 May 2014
ED ATKINS
15 February - 11 May 2014
In his works, which include videos, video installations, texts and drawings, British artist Ed Atkins (born in 1982, lives and works in London) explores the material quality of our contemporary visual world and its existential resonance. He records his videos in high-definition with powerful surround sound. These new options for technical presentation have the paradoxical capacity to reproduce life-like materiality and bodies using immaterial means. This paradox is also a theme in Atkins’s work, which revolves around the cadaver, disease and death – motifs that raise awareness of the viewer’s own corporeality. Atkins’s digital compositions in saturated colours and precise editing rhythms show film material of forests, beaches, fruit and clips from zombie films, and also include computer-generated animations accompanied by sounds varying from guitar crescendos, horror film melodies and dialogues to the murmurs of the artist himself from behind the camera.
As part of his first institutional show in Switzerland, Ed Atkins presents a large-scale installation created specially for this exhibition. He fills the entire exhibition space of Kunsthalle Zürich’s new building with three films and an auditory work that links the films and the spaces. Earlier video works by the artist will also be presented.
A first artist’s monograph comprising texts by Ed Atkins, a conversation between the artist and Beatrix Ruf, and an essay by Joe Luna will be published by JRP|Ringier Kunstverlag, Zurich in cooperation with the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Düsseldorf.
15 February - 11 May 2014
In his works, which include videos, video installations, texts and drawings, British artist Ed Atkins (born in 1982, lives and works in London) explores the material quality of our contemporary visual world and its existential resonance. He records his videos in high-definition with powerful surround sound. These new options for technical presentation have the paradoxical capacity to reproduce life-like materiality and bodies using immaterial means. This paradox is also a theme in Atkins’s work, which revolves around the cadaver, disease and death – motifs that raise awareness of the viewer’s own corporeality. Atkins’s digital compositions in saturated colours and precise editing rhythms show film material of forests, beaches, fruit and clips from zombie films, and also include computer-generated animations accompanied by sounds varying from guitar crescendos, horror film melodies and dialogues to the murmurs of the artist himself from behind the camera.
As part of his first institutional show in Switzerland, Ed Atkins presents a large-scale installation created specially for this exhibition. He fills the entire exhibition space of Kunsthalle Zürich’s new building with three films and an auditory work that links the films and the spaces. Earlier video works by the artist will also be presented.
A first artist’s monograph comprising texts by Ed Atkins, a conversation between the artist and Beatrix Ruf, and an essay by Joe Luna will be published by JRP|Ringier Kunstverlag, Zurich in cooperation with the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION, Düsseldorf.