The Speed Art Museum presents BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER, an exhibition of films and prints by Bruce Conner (1933–2008), an artist known for his innovations in film, assemblage, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, and collage. Co-curated by Miranda Lash, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Dean Otto, Curator of Film, BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER is the Speed’s first exhibition collaboration between its Contemporary Art and Film departments.
Read MoreA MOVIE
Insider Louisville | The Speed Art Museum welcomes exhibition BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER
As 2017 winds down to a close, the Speed Art Museum will send the year out in style with its newest exhibition, BRUCE CONNER: FOREVER AND EVER. The exhibition — co-curated by the Speed’s curators of contemporary art and film, Miranda Lash and Dean Otto, respectively — covers the works of Bruce Conner, the late artist from McPherson, Kansas, who worked in photography, sculpture, printmaking, as well as film, and was known as the “father of the music video.” It marks the first collaboration between the Museum’s contemporary art and film departments.
Read MoreBruce Conner's A MOVIE: Extended until July 15th at Thomas Dane Gallery
in Press
Bruce Conner's ground-breaking first film A MOVIE (1958) will be extended until July 15th at 3 Duke Street, St James's.
Read MoreTHE GUARDIAN | Pink Floyd, Bruce Conner and Anthony Caro: this week’s best UK exhibitions
in Press
Bruce Conner's A MOVIE installation at Thomas Dane Gallery has been selected by The Guardian as one of the top five exhibitions of the week.
Read MoreINCITE | By Amelia Does
The late Bruce Conner was a visionary artist and consistent fixture of the San Francisco counter-culture up until his passing in July 2008. Well-known on the West Coast for his collage sculptures before turning to film assemblage, Conner emerged in the 1960s as a major avant-garde filmmaker. His early films A MOVIE (1958), a montage of found materials culled from various sources including war documentaries, nudie flicks, old westerns and disaster footage, assembled in a rapid collage to Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” COSMIC RAY (1961), a four-minute quick mix of self-shot and sourced footage set to Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” and REPORT (1963-67), a meditative deconstruction of the JFK assassination, appeared during the development and explosive expansion of the post-Maya Deren underground film movement, and helped to define and shape an entire genre of experimental screen practice: the found-footage film.
Read MoreRECYCLED IMAGES | Bruce Conner
The reason I made A MOVIE was because I was waiting for somebody to make a movie that seemed obvious to my mind. I became interested in what was called "experimental" movies, because I had seen some unusual short sequences disguised as "dream sequences" in 1940s movies. Fantasy scenes would not be seen in narrative feature films except occasionally when a character would dream events similar to real life. Strange transformations would take place in normal scenes. Images might be in negative instead of positive, slow motions, backwards, extremely fast, etc. A door would open revealing something different from what you would expect.
Read MoreFilm in the Cities | Bruce Conner
Filmmaker Bruce Conner mines, sifts and salvages through, the spiraling effluvia of our audio-visual junkyards. A razor-eyed fate, he snips and splices; now rejecting, then finding and filing ... but rarely forgetting. His film works are unique constructs composed of familiar imagery recombined into richly provocative puzzles that rhythmically prod the viewer to attempt reconciliations of ambiguity with the obvious and the comic with the horrific, as irony unites anger and concern.
Read MoreFILM QUARTERLY | Fallout: Some Notes on the Films of Bruce Conner
Given the concern for our present and future ecological welfare, it is timely and brilliant Bruce Conner to have selected the birth of the Atomic Age as the subject of his newest film, Crossroads. From material recently declassified by the Defense Department, Conner has constructed a 36-minute work, editing together 27 different takes of the early atomic explosions at Bikini, all un-altered found footage in its original black and white. The film is without dialogue or descriptive factual detail. It consists simply of the visual record of these first bombs' destructive capability.
Read MoreFILM CULTURE | Three Films by Bruce Conner
Recipient of one of the Ford grants, Conner is best known to the art world for his assemblage constructions and, in cinema, for three works: A MOVIE, COSMIC RAY, and REPORT. The latter film, produced with the Ford funds, deals with the Kennedy assassination. All three films, however, are closely related to Conner’s work in assemblage. They draw their inspiration from the world of contemporary realities and issues: not only Kennedy, but in general death, violence, sex, and destruction. Like his objects, Conner’s films constantly weave the current issues with elements of a more nostalgic cast: film-clips from an old western, a snapshot of Jean Harlow, any material which might be found in the trim bin or an old suitcase. Consistent too is Conner’s humor: a combination of grim satire and morbid irony.
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