Portland Filmmaker Matt McCormick comes to Seattle again, not with another work of documentary
/oblique urban social theory, but instead a video-art installation at the Lee Center for the Arts.
McCormick's well received film "The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal" was a deadpan investigation
of the inadvertent/accidental 'abstract expressionism' or 'surrealist automatism' produced by the often
enforced-by-law removal of graffiti in the urban landscape. A phenomena that also speaks much of
america's current infatuation with whiting-out aspects of the urban cultural landscape that seem to
undesirably 'contaminate' or contribute to a sense of the 'cracks' in the commercial economic facade:
Link to "The Subconscious Art of Grafiti Removal" site
Moving from the friction of the urban to the quietude of the desolately rural. This time McCormick's video
work represented as a installation set from a static perspective, rather than deadpan visual narrative (and
one of silence and ambient site-specific sound rather than the voice of Miranda July as the unseen presence
and guide to the sights and themes, as was the case in "The Subconscious Art..."). These are prolonged,
contemplative still shots of sun-bleached, ruined, abandoned and crumbling buildings living out quiet years
in their rural isolation. The effect, is one of transporting the quietude and sense of time passing through the
expanse of these earthy landscapes into the intemerate modern environs of the gallery space.
Link to Lee Center for the Arts "Future So Bright" Exhibition site
