Paul B. Davis [BEIGE]
Javier Morales + John Michael Boling
Eric Fensle
WE LIKE WHAT YOU EAT is a micro survey exhibition investigating a specific set of tendencies in the practice of a selected group of North American contemporary video artists.
The appropriation of pre-existing mainstream entertainment media is the dominant refrain in the work of the artists featured in this exhibition. The internet, in particular video streaming websites such as YouTube, as well as television programs, advertisements, music videos and cinema serve Paul B. Davis, the duo Javier Morales + John Michael Boling and Eric Fensler with an abundant territory from which they draw both their inspiration and subject matter.
In terms of exposure, the art gallery has been matched and perhaps even surpassed in importance by the website itself as an artistic platform for the included artists. In exact accordance with this relocation, there is no singular or predictable audience for their work and that of its ilk; from high school computer geeks to international curators – the fascinated take no dogmatic form.
Immediate, humorous, inventive and, above all, relevant – the artists in WE LIKE WHAT YOU EAT stand as the selected representatives of a much larger movement which, while having an international span, nonetheless maintains its spiritual centre in the United States of America.
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Paul B. Davis [BEIGE] is a DJ, educator and data artist as well as being a founder member, alongside Cory Archangel, of the programming ensemble BEIGE. He had his first solo show at Seventeen in 2007 and will present a solo booth at the Seventeen stand at the NEXT Art Fair in Chicago, late-April 2008. He presents B.Y.O.B.B, one of his trademark YouTube hacks: glitchy, pixilated visual mash-up’s constructed via the manipulation of the compositional data contained within a number of standard video clips taken from the video steaming site.
Javier Morales + John Michael Boling first collaborated together as fellow students at the University of Georgia. Their collective oeuvre is here represented by two key video collaborations. The Church of The Future (2006)
features footage from a mid-80’s edition of the Donahue chat show blended with Jerry Golsmiths Ave Satani, the chilling score originally used in the film The Omen. Body Magic (2006) is another television re-edit work – here, accompanied by a thumping composition by Javier Morales, the Sally Jesse Rafael show melds with a late 80’s edition of the Barbie Dance Club. Together Morales and Boling run the website 53 o’s (www.gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com) and program the video blog Channel 53.
Eric Fensler’s diverse creative output is beyond singular classification – comprising television re-edits, cartoon re-cuts/re-voicings, Polaroid photography, music videos and network television screen writing. For the exhibition he presents the much lauded GI JOE PSA series – manipulated versions of the public service announcements that accompanied the end of each episode of the cult toy franchise’s popular children’s television cartoon.
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WE LIKE WHAT YOU EAT is the inaugural exhibition at Seventeen’s new basement exhibition space – curated by Paul Pieroni. In late May Seventeen will follow this exhibition with the first major survey of the British Scratch Video phenomenon (1983/6). SCRATCH! will run from the 28/05/08 to the 25/06/08.
Paul B. Davis, B.Y.O.B.B (Bring Your Own Bobby Brown), 2008 (still)
Single channel DVD, 4.16mins
Video Still
Paul B. Davis, B.Y.O.B.B (Bring Your Own Bobby Brown), 2008 (still)
Single channel DVD, 4.16mins
(Video Still)
John Michael Boling & Javier Morales, Body Magic, 2006 (still)
Music by Javier Morales
Single channel DVD, 2.25mins
John Michael Boling & Javier Morales, Body Magic, 2006 (still)
Music by Javier Morales
Single channel DVD, 2.25mins
Eric Fensler, ‘GI Joe PSA’s’, 2003 (still)
Single channel DVD, 18.43mins
Eric Fensler, ‘GI Joe PSA’s’, 2003 (still)
Single channel DVD, 18.43mins
John Michael Boling & Javier Morales, The Church of the Future, 2006 (video still)
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Single channel DVD, 2.36mins
John Michael Boling & Javier Morales, The Church of the Future, 2006 (video still)
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Single channel DVD, 2.36mins