Video Art by Grant Stevens Explores Emptiness

I probably should know Grant Stevens from MAAP in Singapore 2004. Here is a pic from their site, presenting "Dazed and Praised (2004),Digital Video".

Grant Stevens, Turtle Twilight, 2006, two channel digital video, duration variable, 2 channels, 4mins & 10mins 57secs, infinite loop, edition of 5
The meaningless clichés that abound in popular forms of mass entertainment are the source of inspiration for Australian video artist Grant Stevens. However, the subject of Stevens’ works seems to be the viewer — his works calling into question the viewers’ acceptance of popular catch phrases as meaningful forms of communication.

“Cliché and Collusion: Video Works by Grant Stevens” is a new exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art of 12 video installations by Stevens that explores the language and communication of popular culture. In his works, which mainly consist of successive flashes of white text on black screens, Stevens recombines text from advertisements, music, film and common conversation to engage the viewer and solicit questions and critique. Several works incorporate visual film clips or rely heavily on audio monologues.

Museum of Art Director Campbell Gray says Stevens’ work draws attention to the meaningless nature of popular communication and the viewers’ acceptance of it by intentionally subverting the viewers’ expectation of these commonplace expressions. “Often, the textual, visual or audible message of a Grant Stevens work seems to follow a pattern of Hollywood construction or a trend in everyday speech,” he says. “But just as viewers expect the pattern to mount toward a climax or conclusion, Stevens subverts the anticipated course.”

For example, in a text-based work titled “Some Want It All” the snippets of text that flash onto the screen are accompanied by the high-energy music typical of a movie preview. The text, which Stevens has appropriated from actual cinematic trailers, seems to tell a story that is building toward a climax. But the work never reaches a resolution, it keeps stringing one typical movie trailer line after another until the video loops, and it starts all over again.

“We hope this exhibition causes our visitors to ask critical questions about their relationship with the mass media and popular forms of communication,” says Herman DuToit, Museum of Art educator. “To what extent do we automatically accept the general level of discourse in popular culture as our own? What impact does mass media have on our personal worldview and hence on our individual construction of reality?”

Stevens recently received a doctorate from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane , Australia and has exhibited his video installations in Australia , England , Indonesia , Italy , Serbia and Singapore . This exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art marks the first museum exhibition of Stevens’ artwork in the United States and presents a varied selection of his new media art.

“Cliché and Collusion: Video Works by Grant Stevens” will open Friday, Sept. 14, 2007 and will be on view through Saturday, Feb. 9, 2008 in the Conway A. Ashton & Carl E. Jackman Gallery on the museum’s lower level. This exhibition is made possible in part by The Eccles Foundation, Curtis and Mary Ann Atkisson, and the Museum of Art Store . Admission to the exhibition is free of charge.