"Figures emerge from abstractions. In Century 21, we can see a cowboy-hatted woman with cat's-yellow eyes-Raquel Welch in the cheesecake Western Hannie Caulder (she is Blake's Sarah Winchester surrogate). Drilled through the eyes, a gunslinger sits as an airbrushed rainbow snake emerging from the bullet hole. Appropriated drawings materialize and fade: an off-register print of Peter Pan's Lost Boys amid neon bars and flurries of white light; an image from a Charles Addams cartoon of a group of 1950s children playing cowboy and chasing a little green man with their guns back into his space ship. In its cowboys vs. flying saucers imagery, the cartoon seems to link the extraterrestrial Century Domes and the House That Rifles Built.
"A sound collage murmurs as the soundtracks for the three sections merge. We hear sound effects of the Western movies: the wail of a harmonica, the creaking of wagon wheels. A trilling music-box version of "The Stars and Stripes Forever" fades into the psychedelic intro to the Rolling Stones' "2,000 Light Years from Home."
"Blake's work overcomes the problem of computer-generated color-how cold and flat the uniform saturation of color can be. His hues make you think of stained glass, not plastic. His "brush strokes" of light represent a giant step past spray-painted graffiti art, which is his art's nearest cousin."
By Richard von Busack via UBUWEB
Jeremy Blake: Century 21 (2004 -- 59 min 42 sec)
900 MB highres version available HERE (thanks to UBUWEB)
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