Screen Time: Photography and Video in the Internet Age

Peter Funch (Denmark, b. 1974). Juvenile Bliss, 2007. Digital colour coupler from the series “Babel Tales.” On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION
Marilyn Minter (USA, b. 1948). Yellow Sparkle, 2007. Colour coupler print. On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION
Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya, b. 1984). Macho Nne (Roman Attire), 2015. Pigment print. On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION

On view September 5 through October 31, 2024

Fun, mischievous and subversive, the artists in Screen Time pursue playful, engaging and thought-provoking approaches to contemporary culture. Turning the telescope in on themselves, they question the evolving role of still photography and video media in an age of digital communication, appropriation and memes.

Drawn from one of the pre-eminent art collections in Europe, Screen Time includes an extraordinary group of artists separated by geography, ethnicity and gender, but united in their concern with the onslaught of information in the twenty-first century. These works include wry references to historical photography and video art while exhibiting a fresh sensibility of humor, self-awareness, and inter-subjectivity, tackling serious issues of identity in a society that is by turns self-obsessed, skeptical, nostalgic, and funny.

The artists embody what have become known as post-internet artistic practices—art that may or may not be made for the internet, but nevertheless acknowledges online culture as an omnipresent influence, inseparable from contemporary social conditions. They ask what it means to be a photographer when everyone is an Instagram influencer; what it means to make video art when everyone is a TikTok video star; and how to deliver meaningful social commentary in the age of the meme.

Screen Time | Photography and Video Art in the Internet Age is co-curated by Richard Reinhart and Phillip Prodger and organized by Curatorial Exhibitions, Pasadena, California. The works on view have been generously loaned from The EKARD Collection.
 
Richard Rinehart, Director of the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University, has curated, taught, lectured, and published extensively on contemporary new media art. He served previously as Digital Media Director for the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and published a book with MIT Press, Re-Collection: Art, New Media, & Social Memory.

Phillip Prodger is Executive Director of Curatorial Exhibitions and former Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The exhibition is made possible with generous support from the Alice Tweed Tuohy Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, Charlie Matsch Fund, and Friends of the Tweed Museum of Art.
 
(1) Peter Funch (Denmark, b. 1974). Juvenile Bliss, 2007. Digital colour coupler from the series “Babel Tales.” On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION
(2) Marilyn Minter (USA, b. 1948). Yellow Sparkle, 2007. Colour coupler print. On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION
(3) Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya, b. 1984). Macho Nne (Roman Attire), 2015. Pigment print. On loan from THE EKARD COLLECTION