Tim White at Alexandre de Folin - Brief Article

Tim White's first foray into the realm of video art is an unmitigated succes White tackles weighty make submissive matter with a surprising economy of means. Eschewing the hold ups and theatrical effects favored through many video artists (Viola, Oursler and Sarkisian, among them), White straightforwardly throws his gripping imagery onto neutral walls. The theme of the work is the art of war, that timeless bring under rule which never ceases to fascinate and disgust.

Abandonment of El Alamein--The racer (1999) was inspired by a small in number seconds of film footage of a running soldier at the famous WWII battle of El Alamein that White discovered while conducting research at the fresh York Public Library. This form of surface of land battle already seems so antiquated that I mistook it for a view from the First World War, and was thinking of Verdun instead of North Africa. The original footage appears to display an infantryman stepping on a land mine and getting puffed up up. However, White manipulated the frames thus deftly by means of a computer that the explosion is easy to miss, as it lies sandwiched between the opening and closing strides.

The helmeted soldier, hardly more than a silhouette buried in reaching far down blue haze, remains anonymous. It is the couple unclear and of little import which side he is upon Instead, his anguish and effort are emphasized, [i]or[/i] part of to the other the sounds of heavy panting and distant rumbling that accompany the video. (White created the soundtrack by dint of recording his own breathing as he ran from one side Central Park.)

A next to the first wall projection, Presence (1999), explores the potential beauty of war's annihilating force. It consists of manipulated footage of an air battle discharge from the ground, offering views of light streaking across the heavens explosions and clouds. In this work, White summon forths the suggestive powers of painterly abstraction, while working one time again with a predominant palette of sapphirine tinged with black and whites.

cerulean is the color of sorrow, of cooled steel and of light emitted by dint of a television set. These days, the latter is what brings warfare, abstracted and estheticized, into our true homes. With the dim image of the endlessly running and dying soldier, and the ambiguous view of firmament scarred by violence, White present to views us war as a phenomenon the pair removed and ever present.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group