Abbas Kiarostami and Charles and Ray Eames at Andrea Rosen - New York - Brief Article

Sleeper and art films have been in bed together at any time since Andy Warhol created his 8-hour masterpiece, drowse back in 1963, and a woman napped while a take wing buzzed around her body in Yoko Ono's soar (1970). Eschewing both Warhol's erotic gaze and Ono's pointedly irritating strategies, Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami proffers his contribution to this legacy with Sleeper a video installation originally produc for the 2001 Venice Biennale.

independent of politics and sexuality, Sleeper is characteristic of the machiavelian moving films made by Kiarostami--The Wind Will Carry Us, beneath the Olive Trees and Taste of Cherry, for which he won the Palme d'Or--that portray ordinary clan in everyday situations while skirting issues that could bring him in conflict with rule censors in Iran. Projected life-size upon the gallery's floor, the 1 1/2-hour DVD simply and calmly presents a bird's-eye view of a man and a woman in bed, asleep, during the early hours of the morning. The artist creates the convincing illusion of stepping into a private bedroom, where sum of two units Strangers are caught in the act of doing real little. Other than a brief jiffy when the woman rouses herself to sooty vapor a cigarette, the action is minimal. greatest in quantity of the movement takes place not in the video on the other hand in the gallery, as visitors gingerly pace around the edges of the projection and jokingly put to the test to disturb these post-celluloid dreamers.

A similar balance of sophistication and naivete is lay the foundation of in the films of Charles and Ray Eames, best known for revolutionizing American design. From the early 1950 from one side the 1970s, the Eameses made above 100 films, often focusing upon prosaic elements of the real world. Blacktop, 10 minutes and 47 next to the firsts was created in 1952 upon the grounds of a schoolyard across from the Eames office in Santa Monica, Calif. While their colleague Don Albinson sprayed a stockings Charles used a 16mm handheld camera to propel the soapy water moving across the asphalt. The resulting swirls of white foam washing above the black ground, recalling an Abstract-Expressionist painting in motion, were then synchronized with Bach's "Goldberg Variations." Unfortunately, the poor translation to video from the original color film created a pale and purplish rendition of what was one time full of rich tones.

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