Curated by Solveig Øvstebø
Utopia: It is no place. The word evokes unrealized visions and failed attempts, and yet the idea persists. Featuring recent work, including four films and a selection of drawings and photographs within a site-specific installation, “Urth,” Ben Rivers’s first museum exhibition in the US, will explore the artist-filmmaker’s long-standing interest in imagining other worlds within and beyond our own. Whether presenting a science-fictional portrait of four island societies on a drowned planet (Slow Action, 2010) or an intimate, seasonal diary shot in his own home (Things, 2014), Rivers uses the moving image to create alternate, distinct territories. “Urth” will debut a commission shot at the Biosphere 2 ecological research center in Arizona and will include screenings of two of the artist’s feature films. A monograph coproduced with Kunstverein in Hamburg, the Camden Arts Centre in London, and the Triennale di Milano will include essays by Melissa Gronlund, Ed Halter, and Andrea Picard and a comprehensive annotated filmography.
