Dreamlands

The Whitney Museum in New York unveils an immersive video exhibition that spans from 1905 to 2016, showing how technology has changed our multisensoriality.

The Whitney Museum of American Art presents “Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016”, a landmark exhibition that focuses on the ways in which technology has created new forms of immersive experience using the moving image. Artists have dismantled and reassembled the conventions of cinema – screen, projection, darkness – to create new readings of space, optical form, and time.

Top: Hito Steyerl (b. 1966), Factory of the Sun, 2015. High-definition video, color, sound; 22:56 min., looped; with environment, dimensions variable. Installation view: Invisible Adversaries, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 2016. Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Marieluise Hessel Collection. Courtesy the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. Photo Sarah Wilmer. Above: Wyatt Niehaus (b. 1989), still from Body Assembly – White Exteriors, 2014. Video, color, silent; 2:52 min. Collection of the artist

The exhibition will fill the Museum’s 18,000-square-foot Neil Bluhm Family Galleries on the fifth floor, as well as the adjacent Kaufman Gallery, and will include a substantial film program in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater, and a series of expanded cinema events organized by Microscope Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn, in collaboration with the Whitney.

Alex Da Corte (b. 1980) with Jayson Musson (b. 1977). Still from Easternsports, 2014. Four-channel video, color, sound; 152 min., with four screens, neon, carpet, vinyl composition tile, metal folding chairs, artificial oranges, orange scent, and diffusers. Score by Devonté Hynes. Collection of the artists; courtesy David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, and Salon 94, New York. © Alex Da Corte, courtesy the artist

The works on view engage our senses using color, touch, 3D, music, light, and surface, flattering space through animation and abstraction or heightening the illusion of three dimensions. The exhibition, with works spanning from the early 1900s to the present, is the result of four years of intensive scholarly research by curator Chrissie Iles, involving experts from the worlds of art and film.

Alex Da Corte (b. 1980) with Jayson Musson (b. 1977), <i>Easternsports</i>, 2014. Four-channel video, color, sound; 152 min., with four screens, neon, carpet, vinyl composition tile, metal folding chairs, artificial oranges, orange scent, and diffusers. Score by Devonté Hynes. Collection of the artists; courtesy David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, and Salon 94, New York. Installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 2014 © Alex Da Corte; image courtesy the artist and Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania
After Oskar Schlemmer (1888–1943), <i>Das Triadische Ballett</i> (Triadic Ballet), 1970. 35mm film transferred to video, color, sound; 29 min. Courtesy Global Screen, Munich. Produced by Bavaria Atelier for the Südfunk, Stuttgart, in collaboration with Inter Nationes and RTB (Belgian Television). Director: Helmut Amann. Choreography and costume designs: Oskar Schlemmer, 1922. Artistic advisors: Ludwig Grote, Xanti Schwinsky, and Tut Schlemmer. ©1970 Bavaria Atelier for SWR in collaboration with Inter Nationes and RTB
Adelita Husni- Bey (b. 1985), still from <i>After the Finish Line</i>, 2015. Video, color, sound, 12:53 min. Collection of the artist, courtesy Galleria Laveronica, Modica
Trisha Baga (b. 1985), <i>Flatlands</i>, 2010. Video, color, sound; 18 min., with disco ball and 3D glasses Collection of the artist; courtesy Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. Installation view, Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, 2011. © Trisha Baga and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York


until 5 February 2017
Dreamland: immersive cinema and art, 1905–2016
curated by Chrissie Iles
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street, New York