Kohn

ARTFORUM | Critics' Picks: CROSSROADS @ Kohn Gallery

Watching the recent digital restoration of Bruce Conner’s thirty-six-minute film Crossroads, 1976, which depicts 1946 footage of the first underwater atomic bomb test at Bikini Atoll, is a vertiginous experience of telescoping back in time. Conner obtained this government-shot film from the U.S. National Archives and with minimal interventions (editing and, most notably, the addition of music), turned it into a resonant meditation on the apocalyptic sublime, rendering the familiar nuclear mushroom cloud strange again. The mushroom cloud is one of Conner’s signature images, appearing in A Movie, 1958, and briefly in Cosmic Ray, 1961, as well as in his collage works and drawings, some of which are also on display here.

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KOHN GALLERY | Bruce Conner: CROSSROADS & Works on Paper

Kohn Gallery is pleased to present Bruce Conner: CROSSROADS, on view November 8 through December 20, featuring the iconic 1976 short film of declassified footage of the first underwater atomic bomb test, The fully restored 36-minute film, with original music by Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley, was last seen in a single screening last fall at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the exhibition at Kohn gallery returns the film to the west coast. In addition to the film, a selection of Conner’s drawings focused similar themes of destruction and resurrection, created between 1962 and 2004.

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