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Ryan Trecartin

Born: 1981
Birthplace: Webster, TX

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Gay [1]
Occupation: Artist, Film Director

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: I-Be Area

American video artist. Frenetic works depict a terrifying new media age. Teenage demons in neon face paint hold court in Home Depot-IKEA styled environments, scheming their own horrendous viral online performance. Productions are tightly edited assaults, the action typically sped up, the dialogue a freakish pidgin of advertising blipspeak, too much to take in at once, often feeling without beginning or end -- only a terrible, throbbing now.

Equally important are products associated with his works. His script for The Re'Search wait'S is revealed as a multicolored document full of layered punctuation and paced at ten-second intervals. A series of images for W magazine, depicts glossy, intensely doctored portraits of his collaborators. Their publication was followed by an online exhibition of Trecartin's obsessive instructions to the artists contracted to photoshop them. As with any film production, Trecartin's work would not be possible without the work of a coterie of talented friends. A celebration at Art Basel in 2011, honoring Trecartin and understated collaborator Lizzie Fitch, featured a Kim Kardashian lookalike contest that drew two dozen impersonators.


[1] "I see people as being what their personality is at the moment of expression. I feel genitals hold us back a lot. They keep us connected to our older ideals of humanity... I think it’s really interesting that there are a lot of trannies now who are in transition and want to be in transition -- they don’t want to be a man or a woman,” he says approvingly. “The more nuanced we get, the more things people want to be.” Underlying these gender-bending theoretical notions is the biographical fact that Trecartin was once a gay boy growing up in the Midwest." Ryan's Web, W Magazine, November 2010.

    University: BFA, Rhode Island School of Design (2004)

Appears in articles:
Ryan's Web, Nov-2010, DETAILS: W Magazine, BYLINE: Arthur Lubow

Author of books:
Ryan's Web 1.0 (2012, documentation)



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