Jul 30, 2012
This week: Artist and educator Steve Reinke.
Steve Reinke is an artist and writer best known for his single
channel videos, which have been screened, exhibited and collected
worldwide. He received his undergraduate education at the
University of Guelph and York University, as well as a Master of
Fine Arts from NSCAD University. The Hundred Videos — Mr. Reinke's
work as a young artist — was completed in 1996, several years ahead
of schedule. Since then he has completed many short single channel
works and has had several solo exhibitions/screenings, in various
venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National
Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), The Power Plant (Toronto), the Art
Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the International Film Festival
Rotterdam and the Argos Festival (Brussels), Barcelona Museum of
Contemporary Art, and the Tate (London).
His tapes typically have diaristic or collage formats, and his
autobiographical voice-overs share his desires and pop culture
appraisals with endearing wit. His fertile brain and restless
energy have led to a prolific output: Reinke's ambitious project
The Hundred Videos (1989-1996), which runs about five hours,
appeared first in a VHS video-cassette compilation, then was
released as a triple DVD set by Art Metropole in Toronto in 2007.
His double DVD set My Rectum is not a Grave (Notes to a Film
Industry in Crisis), also from Art Metropole, 2007, includes
fourteen titles dating from 1997 to 2006.
Mr. Reinke's video work is an extension of literature, focusing on
the voice and performance. His video essays often feature
first-person monologues in an ironic/satiric mode. Where earlier
work was often concerned with an interrogation of desire and
subjectivity, more recent work, collected under the umbrella of
Final Thoughts, concerns the limits of things: discourse,
experience, events, thought. His single channel work is distributed
in Canada by Vtape and he is represented by Birch Libralato Gallery
in Toronto.
He is currently associate professor of Art Theory & Practice at
Northwestern University. In the 1990's he produced a book of his
scripts, Everybody Loves Nothing: Scripts 1997 – 2005, which was
published by Coach House (Toronto). He has also co-edited several
books, including By the Skin of Their Tongues: Artist Video Scripts
(co-edited with Nelson Henricks, 1997), Lux: A Decade of Artists'
Film and Video (with Tom Taylor, 2000), and The Sharpest Point:
Animation at the End of Cinema (with Chris Gehman, 2005).
In awarding the Bell Canada prize for Video Art to Steve Reinke,
the assessment committee said: “Steve Reinke is one of the most
influential artists currently working in video. With the first
installments of The Hundred Videos in the early 1990's he led a
generation away from the studio into a new conceptual fiction. But
Mr. Reinke's contribution goes beyond his important tapes, he is a
committed teacher and he has edited and co-edited several important
media arts anthologies.”
Check out Steve's websites:
www.myrectumisnotagrave.com
www.fennelplunger.com