PORTFOLIO
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Three-channel video installation and sound
I created “The Corridor” in collaboration with Dan Majka for the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture curated by Hashim Sarkis. Majka is a conservation scientist and technologist for the Nature Conservancy. Our installation was exhibited in the Giardini’s Central Pavilion.
As climate change alters habitats and disrupts ecosystems, where will animals move to survive? And will human development prevent them from getting there? “The Corridor” is an installation that uses three-channel video and sound to address the relationship between border permeability and ecosystem resilience in a time of climate change. With this project, we posited that to thrive together with nature in a time of intensifying climate change, we must reconsider how we incorporate permeability into borders and the matrix in between natural environments.
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Three-channel video installation and sound
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Three-channel video installation and sound
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Three-channel video installation and sound
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Three-channel video installation and sound
GARY SETZER and DAN MAJKA
The Corridor: Climate Change, Border Permeability, and Ecosystem Resilience, 2021
Video for rear chamber
GARY SETZER
Installation view of Floating Signifiers, 2020
Dye sublimation prints on coated aluminum
In each work from the ongoing series Floating Signifiers, short texts appear over images of cloud-laced blue skies. Comprised exclusively of their own behind-the-scenes exposé, these artworks lay bare their conceptual intentions and limitations, directing the viewer’s attention to the various rhetorical constructs at play while viewing the artwork.
GARY SETZER
A Run-of-the-Mill Artwork, 2020
Dye sublimation print on coated aluminum
24” x 36”
GARY SETZER
A Misleading Artwork, 2020
Dye sublimation print on coated aluminum
24” x 36”
GARY SETZER
The Supposed Exchange of Warmth Made Real, 2020
Wood, India ink, wax, and space heater
Dimensions variable
The word “SEER” is spelled out on the lower region of the museum wall in black wooden letters. As viewers approach the work the space heater provides a distinct physical sensation. Premised on my own formative encounter with Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, I incorporated the idea of approaching a work of art and growing physically warmer as a means to commemorate the invisible and often overwhelming exchange between the artist and the viewer. Here the word “seer” (an observer or prophet) functions not only as a surrogate for the artist, but also serves as a topical play on words for its homophone, “sear.” The warmth exudes from the work as if emanating directly from the seer, directly associating the prophetic role and vision of the artist with the transformation of the viewer.
An installation view of selected artworks including (from L to R):
The Supposed Exchange of Warmth Made Real, 2020
Panderer (Seventeen Seconds), 2016
GARY SETZER
Panderer (Seventeen Seconds), 2016
Wood, India ink, wax, and space heater
Running Time: 0’ 17”
In the alarmingly short video artwork, Panderer (Seventeen Seconds), I directly address the audience while a counter displays the passing seconds. Using a self-reflexive format, I humorously call attention to the average amount of time viewers spend with an artwork in museums—seventeen seconds. While video art relies on the dimension of time as a critical component for the delivery of its meaning, this artwork conforms to the unrealistic needs of the “average viewer”—a logical but absurd move that effectively lampoons our impractical expectations of the art experience.
GARY SETZER
A Sculpture Consisting of Purchased Wooden Letters Arranged on the Floor, 2019
Wood, India ink, and wax
3/4” x 97 3/8” x 68”
Whereas art often promises the suspension of disbelief to transport the viewer to new worlds, A Sculpture Consisting of Purchased Wooden Letters Arranged on the Floor embraces a self-reflexive rhetoric that resolutely plants the viewer squarely in front of the artwork. By design, the edges of the idea are as defined or exposed as the visible edges of the art object itself. The work is partially a calculated effort to make it difficult to distinguish between form and content—where one begins and the other ends. This designed synchronicity of form and content means, that for a viewer to properly experience the work, they must simultaneously witness a self-flattening of the meaning-imbued art object. The sculpture highlights and exposes its own skeleton, purportedly championing its own limitations as art—leaving the viewer in the gallery acutely aware of the rhetorical exchange they just had.
GARY SETZER
The Gallery Infrastructure Supports This Idea, 2019
Wood, India ink, and wax
8" x 405" x 4.5"
For the sculpture, The Gallery Infrastructure Supports This Idea, individual letters lean against the wall of the museum gallery that the artwork is displayed in. The letters spell out an ambiguous phrase, which also doubles as the work’s title. The intended meaning of the work is purposefully bifurcated. The phrase connotes the physicality of the sculpture, while it simultaneously invokes the artwork’s conceptual meaning. First, there is the literal interpretation of the phrase—that the architecture of the gallery is actually, physically, supporting the leaning wooden letters. Secondly, the work rightfully suggests that the art market frequently features and supports idea-driven artworks.
An installation view of selected artworks including (from L to R):
Panderer (Fifty Seconds), 2018
The Gallery Infrastructure Supports This Idea, 2019
GARY SETZER
Panderer (Fifty Seconds), 2018
Archival Inkjet Print
30” x 38”
Panderer (Fifty Seconds), is a photograph of a standard didactic wall label that looks like it would accompany an artwork in a gallery or museum. While the text contained in the artwork itself is self-justifying, what it doesn’t state is that the text featured in the wall label was carefully designed to take an average of fifty seconds to read so as to accommodate the average amount of time people spend reading explanatory text in art venues.