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  • Robert Arndt

    Arndt’s work suggests a manner of reading the object/subject under a diversiform of presentations, styles, subjectivity, and institutional structures through art and cinematic history. His work shifts between performance, photography, film, video, text, and publications. Since graduating from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design (now Emily Carr University) in 1998, Arndt has exhibited and screened his work in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the U.S., and abroad, including the Vancouver Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Tracey Lawrence Gallery (Vancouver), and Artists Space (New York).

  • Lisa Coulthard

    Lisa Coulthard is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests focus on film theory, sound and violence. She has published on Michael Haneke, French and American cinema as well as on theatre and the visual arts. She is on the editorial board for the International Journal of Zizek Studies and is currently completing a book on sound in the films of Quentin Tarantino, titled The Super Sounds of Quentin Tarantino.

  • Peter Gazendam

    Associate Director
    2008-2014

Exhibitions

Placeholder

ROBERT ARNDT
January 22–March 26, 2011

Placeholder, Robert Arndt

<em>Placeholder</em>, Robert Arndt

<em>Placeholder</em>, Robert Arndt

<em>Placeholder</em>, Robert Arndt

Robert Arndt’s most recent video work, Placeholder, uses a commercial documentation shoot for a series of homogenous blocks as the setting for an absurdist theatre of critical dialogue. Through this familiar backdrop of well-considered object presentation, the scene becomes a site of dubious discourse, akin to an aesthetic sample group. Actors adopt the roles of off-camera producers and directors, engaging in disagreeable narration and directing the objects’ placement while negotiating aesthetic judgments, language, and the structures of authority through the practicalities of collaborative documentation. Moving beyond the presentation of video as theatre model, Arndt’s video installation implicates the screen, gallery, and viewer in this discourse through it’s unconventional presentation.

This exhibition is curated by Peter Gazendam, Artspeak Programme Coordinator.

Postscript 41: Lisa Coulthard on Placeholder (PDF)

Talks & Events

  • Artist Talk

    ROBERT ARNDT
    February 12, 2011

    Artist Robert Arndt will discuss his exhibition, Placeholder at Artspeak.