Green Art Gallery announces its participation in the 2012 London Moving Image Art Fair with “Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm”, a video produced by multidisciplinary artist Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck in collaboration with art historian Media Farzin. The fair will be taking place in London between the 11th and 14th of October 2012.
lessandro Balteo Yazbek & Madia Farzin, Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm; 2011 (gallery view)
“Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm” is a 24-minute video that uses original footage from “Longines Chronoscope”, an American television program that aired between 1951 and 1955 in the US, and invited “experts in the field” to offer opinions on current affairs. The subject of the video is the nationalization of oil in Iran and its reverberations in the Western world. While the video appears to be a straightforward TV program, its source material has been heavily edited to emphasize the eerie resonances between the 1950‘s and the present. The easy-flowing sound bites reveal contradictions within the culture of political honesty and openness of the “democratic” West, exposing the mass media’s desire for instant gratification that has been a part of infotainment from its earliest moment.
Since the mid-nineties Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck has developed a hybrid practice that incorporates the activities of a researcher, archivist, historian and curator. Working across various mediums, his productions formally resemble or incorporate the works of others, stressing notions of authorship and cultural authority. His entangled narratives follow strict methodological rules that are inspired by the unusual relationships he establishes between different realms and disciplines. In his works he aims to reveal the political strategies and motives at work in the world by analyzing the dynamics of power and propaganda in modern history and aesthetics.
Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1972. Solo shows include “Chronoscope” at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria; “Corrupted Files” at Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil; “Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect” at Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York and “A little bit of heaven” at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge. His work has been included in groups shows at such renown institutions as; CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2012); El Museo del Barrio, New York (2012); 12th International Istanbul Biennial, (2011); Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen–Lütze- Museum, Germany (2011), and Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo, (2009).
His work has been featured and reviewed in the Harvard Crimson, Oxford Art Journal, American Art – Smithsonian American Art Museum, ARTMargins – MIT Press, Frieze, Art in America, Flash Art, Modern Painters, Bidoun and Art Nexus among others.
Media Farzin (born 1972, San Diego) is a New York-based critic and PhD candidate in art history at the City University of New York. She received her BFA in Painting from Tehran University and MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. She is the author of numerous monographic essays on artists, and a regular contributor to Bidoun and Art-Agenda. Her curatorial work includes “Turning Points” (Neiman Gallery, 2004), and “Fluxus Scores and Instructions” (Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde, 2008). She is a lecturer at the City College of New York, and instructor at the Museum of Modern Art.
Green Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery based in Dubai, UAE. Representing a multi-generational mix of artists, the Gallery’s program is focused on contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Turkey and beyond, working across different media, traditional and new, who employ a research based approach.
Green Art Gallery
Al Quoz 1, Street 8, AlSerkal Avenue, Unit 28
P.O.Box 25711
Dubai, UAE
T: +971 4 346 9305
F: +971 4 346 9306
E: [email protected]
W: www.gagallery.com
