View Finder

For nearly 30 years and to great acclaim, artist Brian Fridge has used analog cameras to document quotidian items in his small apartment, making films that evoke arenas at a far grander scale, things out of this world – celestial bodies, deep space, swirling black holes – while also suggesting microcosms – the realms of the cellular within our bodies or the secret places of the earth. As philosopher Janae Sholtz says of the thrust of Fridge’s work: “The cosmic is inside us, it is us.”

In anticipation of the total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, Fridge has created a new project called View Finder, part of ‘In the Path of Totality’, a series of seven commissions supported by the Simons Foundation, which will unfold in advance of the eclipse in U.S. locations in the path of totality.

Brian Fridge’s work will unfold in three parts: a 6-minute film on view at Dallas Contemporary as well as other locations throughout Dallas; a series of billboards sited through North Texas depicting Fridge’s analog renderings of the stages of the eclipse; and a collaborative, limited-edition artist publication. Each arm of the project considers the lens – the lens of the artist’s camera, the lens of the car window, the lens of words printed on a page – as a filter through which one perceives the eclipse.

Typically screen-based, Fridge will now expand his practice to include other modes of presentation while staying true to his relationship to the lens as a viewfinder, simultaneously underscoring the scientific relationship to lenses in observations of space, allowing the work to beautifully hover between the realms of scientific and poetic perception. The work creates a deeply satisfying artistic tension between observation and the imagination.

OFF-SITE PROGRAMMING AND ACTIVATIONS:

brian fridge: view finder
exhibition opening
sunday, 10 march 2024 | reception 3.00 pm - 5.00 pm
dallas contemporary | 161 glass st. dallas, tx 75207

northpark center
on-view sunday, 10 march - 5 may 2024

texas theatre
thursday, 28 march 2024 | reception 7:00 pm bar sponosored by dallas contemporary
screening of view finder 7:30 pm, followed by screening of andrei tarkovsky's solaris

dallas contemporary
view finder publication launch
friday, 5 april 2024 | 5.00 pm - 7.00 pm
featuring special musical performance

other locations and activations to be announced on a rolling basis through dallas contemporary social media channels @dallascontemporary #dallascontemporary

Visit dallascontemporary.org for more information on upcoming events and programming.

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