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Indepth Arts News:
"Matthew Ritchie: The Iron City"
2007-06-30 until 2007-09-30
Saint Louis Art Museum
St. Louis, MO,
USA
The Saint Louis Art Museum announces the June 29 opening
of "The Iron City", the tenth installation in the Museum's New Media Series. Matthew Ritchie breaks new ground with "The Iron City", a densely layered,
viewer-activated digital animation that premieres at the Saint Louis Art
Museum. Through a round aperture that evokes the porthole of a ship or the
lens of a camera, the viewer experiences a post-apocalyptic environment
awash in ocean waves and sepia tones. Collapsing bridges and decaying piers
are glimpsed from below. A lulling narrative accompanies the imagery and
alludes to possible scenarios responsible for the conditions rendered in the
film.
In addition to the narrator's voice, The Iron City includes recordings of the
earth's magnetic field described by Ritchie as "the earth's voice," a piece of
music entitled "The City Didn't Sleep" by the defunct Polish group Miasto Nie
Spalo and an anonymously recorded spiritual version of "Ezekiel Saw a
Wheel." With this combination of sound and image, Ritchie notes, "The idea
is to confront and perhaps even transcend the rhetoric of fear that has
recently come to dominate all discussions of the future."
Ritchie (British, born 1964), studied at Boston University before completing a
BFA at Camberwell School of Art in London. He has participated in exhibitions
at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; the White Cube gallery in
London; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Ritchie's artwork can be found in major public collections including those at
the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
York. Ritchie is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York. His work
was also featured in the exhibition Remote Viewing (Invented Worlds in
Recent Painting and Drawing) last summer at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art, "The Iron
City" will be on view in Gallery 301 through September 30, 2007.
The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the nation's leading comprehensive art
museums with collections that include works of art of exceptional quality from
virtually every culture and time period. Areas of notable depth include
Oceanic art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese bronzes and European and
American art of the late 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strengths in
20th-century German art. The Museum offers a full range of exhibitions and
educational programming generated independently and in collaboration with
local, national, and international partners.
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