Charles Atlas

Description

Tent. Zürich, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, 17-02-2018, 13-05-2018. - Monografie toont film- en videostills van de Amerikaanse kunstenaar Charles Atlas (St. Louis 1949). - Charles Atlas has been a leading figure in the domain of film and video art, creating complex video installations and seminal films documenting dance and performance art. He rose to renown with collaborative projects involving choreographers such as Merce Cunningham (1919-2009) and Michael Clark (b. 1962), as well as the fashion designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery (1961-1994). His network of creative collaborators and associates largely coincides with his circle of friends: many of his works from the 1980s and 1990s are portraits of fellow protagonists of the New York underground scene and the contemporary milieu, employing a sub- and pop-cultural idiom to scrutinize aspects of bio-power and the politics of bodies and identity.One defining features of Atlas' work is his ongoing investigation of the expressive potentials of time-based media. His more recent video installations are abstract and playful explorations of an iconography of geometric series or numerical sequences that examine the segmentation and structuring of the visual space as well as contemporary issues in the politics of representation.