Curated by Christopher Bedford

Paul Sietsema is best known for his slow and sumptuous 16-mm films, though his complex practice extends to other media. If he carefully constructs his films as meditations on original and copy, in his works on paper the LA-based artist takes mimesis to an extreme, rendering them all but indistinguishable from old photographs or paint-splattered newsprint. Via convoluted replication processes and incredible handwork, Sietsema’s excavations of material culture present things that are not as they seem, pinning fiction against truth, the now against historical fact. The artist’s first major US survey will include five of his films along with more than forty drawings, collages, and paintings, all of which will be examined in the catalogue containing essays by art historians George Baker and Suzanne Hudson and a new interview with the artist by Bill Horrigan and Bedford.

Travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Sept. 7, 2013–Jan. 5, 2014.

— Elena Filipovic