Park update: The section of the High Line from 16th to 23rd Streets will be closed on March 27 from 7am – 5pm. Visitors may exit at those streets and walk along 10th Avenue to re-enter the park. Stairs and an elevator are available at 23rd Street. At 16th Street, stairs are available.
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Lex Brown, Xavier Cha, and Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir
Video Narcissism
On the High Line at 14th St.
September 28 – November 22, 2017
Daily beginning at 5 pm
An exhibition in video format featuring works by Lex Brown, Xavier Cha, and Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir.
“Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism” is a 1976 essay by Rosalind Krauss that articulates what Krauss perceived to be the narcissism inherent to video as a medium. Channeling the aesthetic of direct confessionals common across reality television and YouTube video journals, the artists featured in this program speak directly to the camera.
Lip Gloss Alurt (2017) is Lex Brown’s (b. 1989, Oakland, CA) account of a 27-year-old woman who is reported to have lost her mouth after staring too long at herself in her phone. In the work, the woman states she was “afraid of transforming into a reflection of the world, but could not resist its fearful pull.”
Xavier Cha (b. Los Angeles, CA) presents her work abduct (2015), in which actors move through conflicting emotions in ambiguous sterile surroundings, each on betraying the other as if the sensations are foreign agents battling for dominance over the subject’s face. abduct explores how uncomfortable and unruly the physical expression of emotions feels on our faces after the seamlessness of our highly edited and filtered digital lives.
Katrín Inga Jónsdóttir Hjördísardóttir (b. 1982, Reykjavik, Iceland) shows it is all my fault (2013), a video in the style of a YouTube confessional or video journal entry, in which she apologies profusely for “all the unhappiness, for the pain, for the fear… for the loneliness” in the world – admitting that it is all her fault, in a way that suggests a repentant deity or a remorseful child.
Organized by Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.
Image: Xavier Cha, Abduct, 2015 (still). Courtesy of the artist
Support
Major support for High Line Art comes from Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. Additional funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.