On the surface, Timothy Hutchings’ second exhibition could appear to be a casual survey of two years work: which coincides only due to its collective origin in the head of one artist. But this isn’t exactly so. These extractions of popular culture are rendered out as animations – to try out their level of aesthetic value. The compelling and often colorful works are about nostalgic bliss, and float between the common plurality of a video game and the select references of high formalism. Perhaps the real signifiers lie in the mind’s eye of the viewer.
In the front gallery, Hutchings starts with a set of small gouache paintings on paper portraying Arctic seascapes – all with icebergs – that are improvised after the style of Hergé the cartoonist. The works combine a sense of icy minimalist style with a feeling of high adventure, and will be accompanied by a video featuring a set of quasi-futuristic icebergs drifting from left to right across a real sea. The setting is an anonymous beach with no indicators of geographic location. A spatial relativism is created: if the viewer is on the East coast, the icebergs are heading south; and if the viewer is on the West coast, they are returning home to the north.
Cloud Walk, a mildly absurd (or optimistic) video projection, features the artist walking from left to right along the tops of thick cumulus clouds. His journey has the feeling of a video game, albeit a dull one, as the artist comes across a truck, climbs inside, and continues at a faster pace until the truck and the artist plummet off the cloud. A second projection, A ‘Quilting, uses fifty-year old quilting squares that form a wild riveting fast-paced collage all to the tune of a 1940s polka record.
In the main gallery, Hutchings will show visually simple videos that are extracted from Atari 2600 games. Some were war or violent action games, which Hutchings has freed of their combat elements: now they are bright spatial fields free of destruction and angry pixels, with new titles like Happy Silent Grand Prix, Chopper Landscape, Quadrunner and Peaceful Happy Bermuda Triangle. Each monitor is accompanied by a copy of a Rothko painting made in carpet, a humorous and aesthetically pleasing connection between the simplicity of the video games and the complex surface of Rothko paintings.
Two final videos will each show four vinyl records that are segmented and combined as one to create a riot of music and smooth confluence of motion, 4-Way Polka Riot and Center of the Universe. The audio is delivered by headphones.
Timothy Hutchings’ 2001 work, The Arsenal at Danzig and Other Views, in which the artist placed himself at vanished sites in Europe, is being shown this year at “Video Ex” in Zurich, Switzerland; the Centro Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; and New Langton Arts, San Francisco. The video has also been shown at “B-Hotel” at PS1/MOMA; “Videodrome II” at the New Museum of Contemporary Art; “Submerge” at the Kunstbebunker Forum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Nürnberg, Germany; “Metropolis Now” at the Centro Reina Sofia; the Borusan Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey; and the Standard Projection 247 series at The Hotel Standard, Los Angeles, curated by Yvonne Force. Additional shows include “Hash Brown Potatoes” at Smack Mellon Gallery, Brooklyn; and “Some Young New Yorkers, Part 11” and “Greater New York” at PS1/MOMA. Timothy Hutchings was born in 1974 in St. Louis, and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. He received his MFA from the Yale University School of Art. He lives and works in Brooklyn.