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FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE: 'Any Ever' explored consumer culture and fractured identity in the digital age. Speaking of a generation raised by the Internet, with the attendant identity crises and overstimulation engendered therein, it captured the blurring of online/offline experience. It riffed on current approaches to narrative, appropriation, collaboration and DIY culture, and reflected on the corporate colonisation of the individual in an era of branding and consumerism. Eschewing polemic, the exhibition held a hyperbolic and dystopian mirror to society. METHODOLOGY:
Mimicking the dizzying disorientation of Trecartin’s art, the labyrinthine installation was designed around a series of ‘containers’, one for each video projection. These viewing spaces included furniture that related to the content of the video and were painted garish colours that reflected or contrasted with its palette. The use of headphones for individual works and a linking ambient soundtrack, coupled with the lowering of the lighting track, enabled the presentation of seven works within one large gallery without the need for costly sound-proofed ceilings or dividing walls. The installation design was adapted for successive iterations of 'Any Ever' at LA Moca, Moca Miami, and MoMA/PS1. DISSEMINATION:
The exhibition in Toronto was accompanied by a conversation between Helena Reckitt, Jon Davies and Ryan Trecartin at the Drake Hotel, Toronto, as part of the Power Plant's International Lecture Series; and a film screening, followed by a Q & A by Trecartin, with Pleasuredome film collective and the Inside Out LGBT Festival in Toronto. An article about Trecartin was published in the Power Plant's biannual magazine in the context of a special issue on 'Screen Space.' 'Any Ever' was promoted as part of a four-artist show at the Power Plant, 'Screen Space', in collaboration with the annual Images Festival in Toronto. Named a 'game changer' by the New York Times, Toronto Star and Frieze Magazine, the exhibition at the Power Plant was promoted via e-flux, Canadian Art ad, website, newsletter, magazine and collaborating institutions. Reviews of the exhibition at its various venues included Flash Art (24.03.10), Artforum.com (28.04.10), Map (Summer 2010), Magenta (02.09.10), Whitehot (February, 2010), Canadian Art (16.12.10). Conversation with Trecartin, available on Vimeo, reviewed in Canadian Art (23.03.10). LA Times previewed and reviewed MoCa exhibition (26.05.10;15.08.10). Tour reviewed in New York Times (23.06.11), New Yorker (27.06.11), Art in America (08.08.11), Frieze (15.10.11).
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