Belated Homage to Ryan Trecartin

The work of Ryan Trecartin can definitely be considered “on the edge” of post-modern art. His style is unsettling, using strange color, repetitive audio, crazy costumes, and odd subject matter as tools for disorientation. The viewer feels both a familiarity and a supreme detachment from the images that flash before them. Much of his work seems to address pop culture and reality television, although it is clear that the meaning is meant to be unclear. “What does it mean? What’s the significance?”

In an interview with James Franco, Trecartin speaks about his artistic origins and process. He talks about making “situations” with his childhood friends, on homemade sets with half written scripts. While these “situations” weren’t originally filmed, he later began to document his endeavors. In this interview, he also reveals that he is inspired not only by television and the Internet, but specifically the way that people interact with these medium. In other words, he is amused by the way human behavior is effected and influenced by the screens that surround them.

I find myself able to relate deeply to Trecartin’s work. I was always fascinated with film, even entering college as a film major; and, growing up with five siblings gave me an ample crew of actors. My films were much more structured, so the plot is not where I relate with Trecartin. My admiration for his work stems from my realization that he is doing some REALLY tedious and repetitive editing. K-Corea in particular looks like any film editors nightmare. Quick flashing images and repeated frames only means one thing:

Hours spent editing to make 10 seconds of product.

Many people do not understand, and are even unimpressed by Trecartin’s work. However, this would not match his institutional reception by such prestigious venues as the Whitney Biennial and the Guggenheim Museum. People who have visited these exhibits are privileged to seeing Trecartin’s work in a prescribed setting. He even says in his interview with James Franco, “If you’ve only seen it online, you haven’t seen it – you’ve only seen a version of it.”

Ryan Trecartin is seriously pushing the boundaries of digital art, while not doing anything overly technically divergent from what’s already been done. The format of his projects are simple, and could be made with a handy cam and iMovie. This said, his subject matter is completely original, poking fun at modern society, and even goes so far as to make social critique on Generations Y and Z.