“The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” as selected by Jesse McLean – NRATI

In conjunction with It’s Going Through You Like an X-Ray, an exhibition of the works of Jesse McLean, this salon will feature excerpts from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) as selected by the artist.

Jesse McLean in attendance.

In conjunction with It’s Going Through You Like an X-Ray, an exhibition of the works of Jesse McLean, this salon will feature excerpts from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) as selected by the artist.

Jesse McLean in attendance.

There’s this moment when a crowd at a Christian rock show find themselves in an ambling, prolonged silence. This is the prescribed point to connect with the Lord. Sway, watch and wait.

Jesse McLean’s videos examine fixations, confound certainty and build a trajectory through the inconceivable. Inner life is synthesized with the screen, convincingly, right up until the moment when the pull-back occurs. Resonance coupled with essayistic layers of images and words; it’s all coming through you. We sway with it. Transfixed and thoughtful, we tumble toward understanding until it is mere steps away. One foot in, one foot out, sometimes the understanding reached is not what is expected, it’s disarming, leaving new questions in its wake. Other times our pre-existing questions—the big ones—are reframed and expanded into a form that can drive us forward. All this through the vessels of televangelists, geysers, ill-fated shuttle launches, reality TV anxiety, tears, trances, songs that cycle perpetually through re-performance on YouTube and collections of things left behind; all carefully selected, all with something to offer. “You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, and you can’t taste it, but it’s here, right now, all around us, it’s going through you like an X-ray.”

Participants are invited to attend a Pleasure Dome screening of McLean’s work preceding the salon on Friday, March 15, 2013.

“In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol—which, with the subtitle “(From A to B and Back Again),” is less a memoir than a collection of riffs and reflections—he talks about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, and success; about New York, America, and his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania; about his good times and bad in New York, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and his life among celebrities.

Jesse McLean‘s work is motivated by a deep curiosity about human behavior and relationships, especially as presented and observed through the mediation of found footage. Her recent work interpolates the production, proliferation, and consumption of televisual experience, investigating how this transfer of information creates a bind of complex relationships between maker and viewer. Interested both in the power and the failure of the mediated experience to bring us together, her work asks the viewer to walk the line between voyeur and participant.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s.

This meeting of No Reading After the Internet (Toronto) is supported by the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) and Pleasure Dome. Special thanks to Whippersnapper Gallery for hosting the salon.

Saturday 16 March 2013 –

Non-members: Free
Members: Free

Location:
Whippersnapper Gallery 
549B Dundas Street West 
Toronto ON Canada