The Art Newspaper

Ed Ruscha stars in Doug Aitken film

Francesco Bonami-curated project to be shown in Rome

By Gareth Harris. Web only
Published online: 22 September 2009

London. US artist Ed Ruscha will take a starring role in a new film by the Los Angeles-based video artist Doug Aitken, which will be shown on an island in the middle of Rome. The Tiberina Island, a 335-metre long stretch of land located in the southern bend of the Tiber, will host the installation entitled Frontier (opening on 23 October).

Aitken told The Art Newspaper: “At the core of the work is a cinematic installation: a narrative film expanded to show on multiple screens in a site-specific structure. The film revolves around a protagonist, played by Ruscha as a solitary individual who moves through a city, from day into night, while the surrounding world undergoes a revolutionary change. In the work, he is carried through a series of seemingly everyday situations in a minimal landscape. These situations progress from insignificant moments to a series of more poignant encounters involving increasing numbers of people that eventually takes him to a gathering protest.”

The work, curated by the Italian scholar Francesco Bonami, is the latest commission in a series launched in 2007 and backed by Italian electricity company Enel. “Like a modern coliseum, the roofless structure will offer views to its interior from the bridges around the site. The work will glow in the city night,” added Aitken. “It’s an uncompromisingly avant-garde work that’s open to the public in a way that art works in museums and galleries could never be.” The film, which includes footage from California, Rome, Israel and South Africa, will be donated to the MACRO contemporary art museum in Rome.

A retrospective of Ruscha's work opens at the Hayward Gallery in London next month ("Fifty Years of Painting", 14 October-10 January 2010).