STEVE MCQUEEN
Since his first video works of the early 1990s, Steve McQueen has used the medium to create intense, often short, non-narrative pieces in which sound and image work to capture a single moment or event. The images he creates, both in his photographic works, videos, and films record these micro-events in which the movement or stillness of time is palpable as texture, light and history meet.
Illuminator (2001), features a long fixed shot of the artist watching a French documentary on British and American troops in Afghanistan.
The changes of intensity of the TV's light - the only one illuminating the room - and the blurring and sharpening of the image elevate the mundane setting to an almost painterly abstraction. McQueen's body functions as the projection screen, as the source of reflected light captured by the camera and also as witness - along with the video's viewers - to the sound of a brutal invisible reality documented on television.
In recent years, voice - both as sound and bearer of meaning - has played a crucial role in his work. It is an overwhelming feature in 7th November, a single slide projection and sound installation that combines absolute visual stillness with an uninterrupted flow of narrative, Random, mental connections between image and sound begin to take grip as a disturbing confession unfolds. This unfolding is one that implicates the spectator little by little through its strange, dilated time, the complicity involved in hearing another's confession, and the subversive force of a frozen image as backdrop to an uncontained acknowledgment of guilt.
In these as in other works, whether he records an infernal descent into a South African Mine (Western Deep, 2002) or the inexplicable falling of bodies against a pale blue Grenada Sky (Carib's Leap, 2002), McQueen's filmic works engage the body of the viewer in an experience at once cinematographic, physical, and psychological as the artist brings together complex past histories and contemporary realities.-B.V./E.F.
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=8A01F9BA-BBCF-11D4-A93500D0B7069B40
http://www.dialnsa.edu/iat97/Documenta/mcqueen.html
http://www.fact-index.com/s/st/steve_mcqueen__artist_.html
http://www.tateandegglive.com/biographies/biog_event7.html
http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2004/03/19/31893.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/545627.stm
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART17087.html
http://www.iniva.org/general/bio9
http://www.liceus.com/cgi-bin/gui/03/1566.asp
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/publishing/pub_mcqueen.htm
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/02/02_mcqueen.htm
http://www.paris.fr/musees/MAMVP/expositions/mcqueen/mcqueen_cat_bosse_ang.htm
http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/13987
Born 1969 in London, Great Britain
Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
7th November 11 7, 2001
Single slide projection, sound, 23
Courtesy Gallery Marian Goodman, New York
Single slide projection, sound, 23
Courtesy Gallery Marian Goodman, New York
Since his first video works of the early 1990s, Steve McQueen has used the medium to create intense, often short, non-narrative pieces in which sound and image work to capture a single moment or event. The images he creates, both in his photographic works, videos, and films record these micro-events in which the movement or stillness of time is palpable as texture, light and history meet.
Illuminator (2001), features a long fixed shot of the artist watching a French documentary on British and American troops in Afghanistan.
The changes of intensity of the TV's light - the only one illuminating the room - and the blurring and sharpening of the image elevate the mundane setting to an almost painterly abstraction. McQueen's body functions as the projection screen, as the source of reflected light captured by the camera and also as witness - along with the video's viewers - to the sound of a brutal invisible reality documented on television.
In recent years, voice - both as sound and bearer of meaning - has played a crucial role in his work. It is an overwhelming feature in 7th November, a single slide projection and sound installation that combines absolute visual stillness with an uninterrupted flow of narrative, Random, mental connections between image and sound begin to take grip as a disturbing confession unfolds. This unfolding is one that implicates the spectator little by little through its strange, dilated time, the complicity involved in hearing another's confession, and the subversive force of a frozen image as backdrop to an uncontained acknowledgment of guilt.
In these as in other works, whether he records an infernal descent into a South African Mine (Western Deep, 2002) or the inexplicable falling of bodies against a pale blue Grenada Sky (Carib's Leap, 2002), McQueen's filmic works engage the body of the viewer in an experience at once cinematographic, physical, and psychological as the artist brings together complex past histories and contemporary realities.-B.V./E.F.
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=8A01F9BA-BBCF-11D4-A93500D0B7069B40
http://www.dialnsa.edu/iat97/Documenta/mcqueen.html
http://www.fact-index.com/s/st/steve_mcqueen__artist_.html
http://www.tateandegglive.com/biographies/biog_event7.html
http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2004/03/19/31893.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/545627.stm
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART17087.html
http://www.iniva.org/general/bio9
http://www.liceus.com/cgi-bin/gui/03/1566.asp
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/publishing/pub_mcqueen.htm
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/02/02_mcqueen.htm
http://www.paris.fr/musees/MAMVP/expositions/mcqueen/mcqueen_cat_bosse_ang.htm
http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/exhibitionInfo/exhibition/13987