PREVIEWS: BERLIN, RYAN TRECARTIN

Ryan Trecartin
KW INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
Auguststrasse 69
September 14, 2014–January 11, 2015

Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Ellen Blumenstein

In keeping with his pointedly twenty-first-century fixation on how networked technologies have reshaped consciousness into something at once hyperactive and attenuated, Ryan Trecartin has been known to edit his work right up until minutes before an opening. However, a few details about the epic-scale installation he’s preparing for this exhibition—his first museum solo in Germany—may be safely leaked. Like his much-lauded suite of videos seen at the 2013 Venice Biennale, this piece promises to combine the spatial potential of the gallery with the immersive quality of the cinema and is likewise being crafted with close collaborator Lizzie Fitch. But the piece will also contain an element he’s never before attempted: a multichannel sound installation that will constitute a major part of the show’s narrative experience. Given the Finnegans Wake–meets–Four Loko complexities of Trecartin’s masterful screenplays, be prepared for an earful.