Keith Sonnier, still from Color Wipe, 1973, color videotape, 30 minutes with sound. Peformed by Tina Girouard.
Keith Sonnier, Depose, Cat Doucet Series, 1996, mixed media with argon and electric light, 56 x 30 x 18 inches. All images courtesy the artist and Leo Castelli Gallery.
Calligraphy drawn from the age of satellites beaming and technology blaring, Keith Sonnier’s sculptures, urban neon and country trash, fuse the detritus of popular western culture with the suggestiveness of eastern imagery. Best known for his neon sculptures, Sonnier also pioneered early video art and installation which captured the razzmatazz of our new found infatuation for digital dreaming. Vertical roll, black, neon and strobe light; dancers, musicians, computer language, television broadcast and satellite transmission form the visual and aural vernacular of his tapes and films, recently gathered under the title, Channel Mix.
Keith Sonnier, Atchafalalaya, Cat Doucet Series, 1996, neon, argon lighting, steel, 80 x 48 x 9 inches.
Keith Sonnier, Animation II, 1974, ¾ inch color videotape, 25 minutes with sound.
Like his older compatriot Mark Leckey, Atkins deftly utilizes syncopated montages of sounds and filmic images to create disturbing and disorienting virtual realities.
“A good part of our work is about giving materiality to things that aren’t visible.”
Working with bed boards and found objects.
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Tim Roth, Amy Hempel, Emmylou Harris, Matthew Ritchie, Wallace Shawn, Christian Wolff, Gilles Peress, Kendall Thomas, and George Walker.
I don’t think an artist and a shaman actually have that much difference if we go back, way back, in time. Today, it’s just gotten so wrapped up in intellectual stuff that we’ve gotten far away from a basic truth about what artists do in the world.
Lucy Dodd
