Mark Boulos
22 Apr - 31 Jul 2011
© Mark Boulos
All That Is Solid Melts into Air, 2008
Two-channel video installation
Running time: ca. 15 minutes
Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Ana Carolina & Luiz Guilherme Affonso, Steven and Kathleen Guttman, Patricia and William Kleh, Monique and Alex Halberstein, Carole and Ira Hall and Aymee and Peter Zubizarreta, commemorating the 2010 MAM International Committee visit to Berlin, Germany.
All That Is Solid Melts into Air, 2008
Two-channel video installation
Running time: ca. 15 minutes
Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Ana Carolina & Luiz Guilherme Affonso, Steven and Kathleen Guttman, Patricia and William Kleh, Monique and Alex Halberstein, Carole and Ira Hall and Aymee and Peter Zubizarreta, commemorating the 2010 MAM International Committee visit to Berlin, Germany.
MARK BOULOS
22 April - 31 July, 2011
Miami Art Museum premieres a newly-acquired video installation by Mark Boulos, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (2008) in the Focus Gallery section of the Permanent Collection installation. Boulos, an artist-filmmaker working in London and Amsterdam, makes multi-screen documentary videos about religious ecstasy and political militancy. All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a two-channel video installation, with images screened on opposite walls of a room. In the projected images the corporate colonization of Nigerian oil resources creates the occasion for a contrast of cultures and beliefs.
In the installation, one screen features images shot in the Niger delta, featuring militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has declared ‘total war’ on the foreign oil corporations that extract and export oil from their territory. The guerillas are shown preparing themselves for battle and asking for blessings from Egbisu, their god of justice and war, who inspires and protects them from bullets. On the opposite screen are traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodities exchange in the world, who speculate on oil and other commodity futures. Paradoxically, Boulos’ video purposely underscores the similarities as well as the differences between these two groups at opposite ends of the oil “pipeline:” Members of each group appear in costume, perform ritualized actions, and whip themselves into emotional frenzies. Through this juxtaposition, Boulos highlights the combination of emotional intensity and ideological abstraction that characterizes both groups.
When All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the Sydney Biennial in 2008, Art in America hailed Boulos as “one of the real discoveries of the exhibition,” and praised the video installation as “lush and enthralling.” When it was presented at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, LA Weekly called it “visceral.” Of his 2010 exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, which included All That Is Solid Melts into Air, the Vancouver Observer wrote, “At first blush this work seems more like documentary filmmaking than art. But Boulos’ creative juxtapositions and keen eye for detail transports his work to a higher, poetic level.”
All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008 and has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2008, the Berlin Biennial in 2010, and the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. The video was acquired by MAM in 2010 when a group of museum supporters saw it at the Berlin Biennial and contributed the funds to purchase it. This is the first time it is being shown at MAM.
22 April - 31 July, 2011
Miami Art Museum premieres a newly-acquired video installation by Mark Boulos, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (2008) in the Focus Gallery section of the Permanent Collection installation. Boulos, an artist-filmmaker working in London and Amsterdam, makes multi-screen documentary videos about religious ecstasy and political militancy. All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a two-channel video installation, with images screened on opposite walls of a room. In the projected images the corporate colonization of Nigerian oil resources creates the occasion for a contrast of cultures and beliefs.
In the installation, one screen features images shot in the Niger delta, featuring militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has declared ‘total war’ on the foreign oil corporations that extract and export oil from their territory. The guerillas are shown preparing themselves for battle and asking for blessings from Egbisu, their god of justice and war, who inspires and protects them from bullets. On the opposite screen are traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodities exchange in the world, who speculate on oil and other commodity futures. Paradoxically, Boulos’ video purposely underscores the similarities as well as the differences between these two groups at opposite ends of the oil “pipeline:” Members of each group appear in costume, perform ritualized actions, and whip themselves into emotional frenzies. Through this juxtaposition, Boulos highlights the combination of emotional intensity and ideological abstraction that characterizes both groups.
When All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the Sydney Biennial in 2008, Art in America hailed Boulos as “one of the real discoveries of the exhibition,” and praised the video installation as “lush and enthralling.” When it was presented at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, LA Weekly called it “visceral.” Of his 2010 exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, which included All That Is Solid Melts into Air, the Vancouver Observer wrote, “At first blush this work seems more like documentary filmmaking than art. But Boulos’ creative juxtapositions and keen eye for detail transports his work to a higher, poetic level.”
All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008 and has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2008, the Berlin Biennial in 2010, and the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. The video was acquired by MAM in 2010 when a group of museum supporters saw it at the Berlin Biennial and contributed the funds to purchase it. This is the first time it is being shown at MAM.