Meredith Zielke & Yoni Goldstein: The Jettisoned

February 22 - March 11, 2011

The Jettisoned is the much-anticipated premiere by collaborators Yoni Goldstein and Meredith Zielke. This three wall cinema projection presents a sweeping imaginary of frozen historical, ritual, and symbolic moments. Rendered from footage shot in Chicago, Warsaw, and Mexico City, each of the three projections suggests the illusion of time in suspension. This illusion dissipates as we catch a blink of an eye, a twist of smoke, a glisten of fluid as it streams from an elaborate network of forensic tubes. Although many of the symbolic elements found throughout the videos are informed directly by art history—from the tradition of tableau vivant to Northern European still life painting—the work has a distinctively contemporary visage made possible through the use of high-resolution film. The rigid boundaries erected by conventional interpretations of collective, conditional, and bodily identities are torn down in The Jettisoned: bodily mechanisms present sickness and health as being part of the same process of sustained loss; anachronistic renditions of epic gestures deplete the national epic of its definitive qualities; crypto-Judaic ritual offers veiled signs of a heritage while simultaneously dissolving it into working-class Mexican Catholic traditions. The Jettisoned carefully considers the rich cartography of identity at its most nebulous form.

Recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Goldstein and Zielke have established an international artistic presence within a short time. Their award-winning projects have appeared in numerous exhibitions, festivals, and screenings the world over. Recent artistic endeavors have included events in Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.