VIDEO ART; INSTALLATION ART
Marclay, Christian
U.S. / U.K. (1955 - )
Telephones
1995
Single-channel video (color and black and white, sound); Duration: 7:30 minutes
4 15/16 x 5 5/8 x 7/16 in. (12.5 x 14.3 x 1.1 cm) case size; 4 3/4 in. (12.1 cm) diameter
Gift of William and Ruth True
FA 2014.304

Christian Marclay is interested in the surprising connections between sound, image, and film. His work, Telephone, is a seven-and-a-half minute video made by appropriating and compiling short film clips of characters in movies using a telephone. In this work, space and time are playfully manipulated as the sequential clips create a continuous yet broken narrative. Marclay zooms in on the telephone as an iconic sign of modern communication, an object that occupies multiple sites (hospitals, police stations, private homes, booths, and the like) and that is capable of connecting individuals in rural and urban settings across continents. Although architecture is not directly cited in the clips, as the video progresses, we recognize faces, recall movie plots, and begin to identify and discern whether these are private or public spaces. Telephone precedes and is also connected to other important works by the artist like Video Quartet (2002) and The Clock (2010) where snippets of classic cinema have been used to construct impressive visual and sonic video collages.

Christian Marclay lives and works in New York. He studied at the Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel in Geneva, Switzerland, 1975–1977; sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, 1977–1980; and at the Cooper Union in New York exchange student program, 1978. Marclay has had several solo and group shows worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011–2012; MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006; and the Seattle Art Museum, 2004. He was chosen to participate in the Whitney Biennale in 2002 and the Venice Biennale in 2011, where he was awarded the Golden Lion. -- Guidebook copy for The Ghost of Architecture, July 13 to September 29, 2013.