Escape Pod
Jonathan Monaghan
Bitforms, New York
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- 00:00
- Title
- Escape Pod
- Gallery
- Bitforms, New York
- Year
- 2015
- Duration
- 20 min
- Format & Technical
Single channel, HD video, Colour, Sound, Animated Film
Escape Pod is based on hunting mythologies of the Greek and Nordic traditions. It captures the journey of a golden stag that roams modernist spaces of authoritarian confrontation and material excess. Lavish bedrooms, airport checkpoints, and a luxury riot gear boutique are encountered, as the scenery unfolds from the perspective of a floating viewpoint that is framed as a continuous shot. In a climactic moment, the golden fawn is birthed out of a BoConcept sofa, only to be carried away, into a heavenly Duty Free shop in the clouds. Seamlessly looped in a twenty-minute cycle, Escape Pod suggests an apocalyptic decadent future – one that is militarized, totalitarian and permeated by extravagance. It is a representation of laboured pursuits, particularly of the otherworldly or unobtainable.
Stills
Jonathan Monaghan (1986, New York, USA) crafts psychologically driven works mining subconscious fears and desires associated with technology, consumerism and wealth. His interdisciplinary practice pulls from wide-ranging sources, such as historic architecture, religious iconography, design, science fiction, and advertising. Past exhibitions and screenings of his work include The Sundance Film Festival, The Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, and The British Film Institute. His work has been featured in several media outlets including The Washington Post, VICE, The Wall Street Journal and The Village Voice. Monaghan is represented by bitforms gallery in New York and Galerie 22,48m2 in Paris.
Last update 25th April, 2017.
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Bitforms
- Address
- 131 Allen Street, 10002, New York, USA
- Phone
- 001 212 366 6939
- Website
- www.bitforms.com
Founded in 2001, bitforms gallery represents established, mid-career, and emerging artists critically engaged with new technologies. Spanning the rich history of media art through its current developments, the gallery’s program offers an incisive perspective on the fields of digital, internet, time-based, and new media art forms.
Supporting and advocating for the collection of ephemeral, time-based, and digital art works since its founding, bitforms gallery artists are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Center for Art and Media (ZKM), Karlsruhe; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, among other institutions internationally.
In September 2014, bitforms gallery relocated from Chelsea to the Lower East Side, opening a storefront space on Allen Street.