Crossfire

  • 2007
  • Christian Marclay
  • 4 channel video projection
  • 8 min. 27 s. in loop
Engulfed by a pulsating violence that intensifies and diminishes, the viewer becomes the target of gunfire that is featured in films by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction), Brian De Palma (Scarface), John Woo (A Bullet in the Head) and James Cameron (Terminator), directed towards the centre of the space. While raising the issue of Hollywood’s violence and fascination with firearms, the artist uses the latter as a percussive instrument in a visual and audio collage that engages the captive spectator with its intensity.

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Christian Marclay

Since the early 1980s, Christian Marclay has been working on the edge of the visual arts and music.

In the 1970s he began exploring alternative realms of art and music, incorporating elements of punk and performance into his work, which is often iconoclastic, echoing the Fluxus movement. Drawn to vinyl records, he breaks, scratches and glues them back together to create music made up of a series of chaotic sounds, or uses them in sculptures and installations. In his video Guitar Drag (2000), he explores new sounds by mistreating rock music's favourite instrument. One of the most radical precursors of sampling, Marclay conceived spectacular video installations during the 1990s and created “sonic images” drawn from the depths of cinema.

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