John Wood & Paul Harrison
Paul Harrison (1966) and John Wood (1969) have worked together in the field of video art since 1993.
Their work is characterized by a conceptual, yet ironic approach. Their videos give life to brief, yet paradoxical actions, which take place in carefully conceived scenes built ad hoc in studios. The two artists are the protagonists of their own videos and move within specifically created contexts and experiment with various, unpredictable courses of action. Their stories induce the spectators to envisage various possible evolutions in the story as it unfolds, generating a heightened sense of suspense which, frequently, results in all unfulfilled expectations.
Their most recent videos, such as Unrealistic Mountaineers, Wood & Harrison insist on a sense of anticipation, focusing on the tension between their bodies on the summit of a mountain: an apparently real scene which is, instead, deliberately artificial and circumscribed. On the other hand, in Diyvbied, set in a fake car park, we witness a series of sudden explosions. In the 10x10 video one has the sensation of viewing offices – and unseemly scenes – as if from the perspective of an elevator in descent and in 100 Falls one discovers how it is possible to fall from a ladder and get up again in a hundred different ways. In addition to the videos, drawings and objects will also be on exhibit.