Christian Marclay is a visual artist and composer based in New York. His work incorporates a juxtaposition of photography, sound recording, video and film. Born in California (1955) and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, he studied sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art (1977-1980) (The European Graduate School, 2002).
This particular piece of work is a video installation, entitled Crossfire. It consists of four large projection screens, playing an accelerated montage of gunfire, taken from American Hollywood films. The display context of the installation is as follows:
Each of the four screens has been positioned in such a way that the viewer is engulfed in a volatile physical space. Additionally, the scenes have been selected for their direct nature, in that all the guns are being fired towards the centre of the image, at the viewer. Through this, Marclay highlights the violent capabilities of the photographic art.
The gun is an almost epochal image, with a constant presence in the media, whether it is in relation to local crime, war or its role as a narrative tool in films. While guns almost always allude to violence of some description, they can also be said to provide a false sense of security in the presence of a foreign threat. With Crossfire, Marclay flirts with the corresponding sense of fascination and dread (White Cube, 2007).
This particular piece of work is a video installation, entitled Crossfire. It consists of four large projection screens, playing an accelerated montage of gunfire, taken from American Hollywood films. The display context of the installation is as follows:
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| http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/ |
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| http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/ |
Each of the four screens has been positioned in such a way that the viewer is engulfed in a volatile physical space. Additionally, the scenes have been selected for their direct nature, in that all the guns are being fired towards the centre of the image, at the viewer. Through this, Marclay highlights the violent capabilities of the photographic art.
The gun is an almost epochal image, with a constant presence in the media, whether it is in relation to local crime, war or its role as a narrative tool in films. While guns almost always allude to violence of some description, they can also be said to provide a false sense of security in the presence of a foreign threat. With Crossfire, Marclay flirts with the corresponding sense of fascination and dread (White Cube, 2007).
As with much of Marclay's work, sound is an integral facet of the installation. The gun shots have been married together in a manner similar to that of notes on a musical score and despite being under perpetual strike, the sound rhythmically intensifies and diminishes throughout. Clément Chéroux, curator of the 2012 exhibition entitled Shoot! Existential Photography at The Photographers' Gallery, draws a similar comparison in the video below (The Photographers' Gallery Blog, 2012).
In the 2007 (2 February - 10 March) exhibition of Crossfire, at the White Cube gallery in Hoxton Square (London), the video installation was accompanied by a series of prints. Marclay crafted the prints from a collection of onomatopoeic words he had ripped out of comic books. These words were then collaged, scanned and reprinted on a vast scale (White Cube, 2007).
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| http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/ |
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| http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/ |
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| http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/ |
Bibliography
The European Graduate School. 2002. Christian Marclay Biography. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.egs.edu/faculty/christian-marclay/biography/.[Accessed 15 October 13].
The Photographers' Gallery Blog. 2012. Christian Marclay's Crossfire. [ONLINE] Available at:http://thephotographersgalleryblog.org.uk/2012/11/03/marclaycrossfire/. [Accessed 15 October 13].
White Cube . 2007. Christian Marclay Crossfire. [ONLINE] Available at:http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/christian_marclay_crossfire_hoxton_square_2007/. [Accessed 15 October 13].
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