For release February 5, 1980
DOUGLAS DAVIS
The Silver Screen
Left-Center-Right
February 15-March 16, 1980
The movies come to the Ronald Feldman Gallery this month, along with a television debate between two fiery contenders. Silver Screen, a soundless movie by Douglas Davis, premiers on February 16 (the Chinese New Year) from 11 AM to 5:30 PM in the gallery’s main viewing space. The fast-moving plot of Silver Screen charges toward an enigmatic by witty ending. Viewers are urged to come early, grab one of the faded, threadbare seats, and root hard for the endangered hero – or the relentless, mysterious villains.
Alternating in playing time, Left-Center-Right occupies the other end of the main gallery. A television installation, this work pits two colorful figures against each other on adjacent monitors, a red-shirted provocateur on the left, a blue-shirted adversary on the right. They debate, bait, coax and threaten each other. Finally they dare each other to perform certain unprecedented acts, in full public view.
The Silver Screen marks a sharp departure from Davis’ previous work in form, if not content. His first film, it fuses the special qualities of an anachronistic medium (the silent movie) with some of the most advanced questions posed by contemporary art. By harnessing the comedic form to explore serious and fundamental issues, the film acts both as an Entertainment and a metaphor. The artist was joined on the screen by Laura Davis and Charles J. Stanley.
Left-Center-Right is a performing installation for two monitors, audio cassette and speaker. As the title suggests the dialogue occurs between left and right, thrust and parry, progressive and reactionary (Davis plays both parts). It touches on issues raised by contemporary art, architecture, politics, and society. Like Silver Screen, Left-Center-Right uses narrative diversion to surface hidden, provocative issues. Both Left-Center-Right and Silver Screen were produced at Young Filmmakers Cooperative in New York City.
This is Douglas Davis’ second one-man show at the Feldman Gallery. He has exhibited in museums and galleries across the world and is well-known for his pioneering work in television, performance, printmaking and drawing. In 1977, he performed with Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik on the first live satellite telecast performed by artists. Opening Documenta 6, the program was transmitted to more than 25 countries simultaneously, perhaps the largest audience ever reached by an art performance. In New York he has developed the notion of “the double audience” for television performance (at home and in the viewing space) through CATV, at the Whitney Museum, the Kitchen, Anthology Film and Video Archives, and Franklin Furnace. He has also collaborated with the Austrian, German, and Venezuelan television networks. Recently, he has continued his contact with the double audience via radio at Franklin Furnace in collaboration with WBAI. He has written extensively on issues in the arts and is the author of Artculture: Essays on the Post-Modern (Harper and Row). He visits-teaches at universities and art colleges around the world for the International Network for the Arts. (The catalogues of Mr. Davis’ retrospective European exhibition, published by D.A.A.D., Berlin will be available at the gallery.)
Screenings will begin at 10:30 AM and be shown every hour on the half four, or at special times upon request.
