Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin, Zabludowicz Collection

Ryan Trecartin’s relentless video installations in his first solo exhibition at the Zabludowicz collection, London. See why his work had people screaming at the Liverpool Biennial back in 2010

Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin 2014

The hyper-real, post-internet drama of Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin's collaborative installation ‘Priority Innfield’ (last seen at the Venice Biennale, 2013) is being reconstructed as an immersive movie theatre installation for Trecartin's first solo show at the Zabludowicz this October. 

Ryan Trecartin, video installations

Trecartin's movies are the highly seductive, overwrought products of technological acceleration, yet once you become accustomed to the super-fast, disorientating editing and overwhelming visual and sonic effects, it becomes clear that Trecartin is a poet, and one of remarkable genius. This is not video art. Trecartin calls his films ‘movies’ for a reason; they have characters and plots, and tell stories. He combines a novel use of technology with a camp aesthetic of cheap, gaudy make-up, bad acting, and self-consciously cheap looking sets and costumes made by Lizzie Fitch. His movies are nothing less than the poetic ballads of a generation irrevocably immersed in communication technology. 

Prepare to be overwhelmed, maybe even to walk out. Watching a Trecartin film is like passing through the sonic boom: fast and relentless. The first time you watch one of Trecartin's films you may feel you can’t watch it. It is only with the freedom to explore the mode that one can get into the complex plots and sub-plots, and gain access to the emotion of his human dramas. While last year at a screening of two of Trecartin’s feature films at the Zabludowicz there were only three people in the audience, it seems now the controversial artist's following is finally growing and with good reason.