25 Apr 2013

John Wood & Paul Harrison at Studio Trisorio Naples

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 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.

John Wood and Paul Harrison have exhibited at the MOMA and White Columns in New York, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Tate Britain in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the CCA Wattis in San Francisco, the MIMA in Middlesbrough, the Cardiff Ffotogallery, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Zacheta National Gallery Art in Warsaw and the Kunstalle Tallin in Estonia. The works can be found in both public and private collections including the Tate Gallery in London, the MOMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou, the Tel Aviv Museum, the New Museum and Art Gallery in Walsall, the Ludwig Collection in Aquisgrana, the France at the Kadist Foundation in Paris and the British Council Collection. They held their first solo exhibit in Italy in 2009 at the Studio Trisorio in Naples and Rome.