Still from El Matador (X5), 2010, silent 16mm color film

Amy Granat came to art through music. “Growing up in St. Louis, I didn’t really have much of a connection to contemporary art as a teenager. The music world of the early ’90s was my culture.”

At Bard College, where she received her undergraduate degree, she was in a band with then-boyfriend, Sebastian, where she played bass, sang, played drums and wrote music. (Here’s a link to a review of an Amy!Pop performance, circa 2004).

When she moved to New York after college, she began playing her music in the subway; meanwhile, she participated in The Film Collective and other film-creating pursuits. Enter Steven Parrino, introduced by a mutual musician friend. Steven, a painter, began including Amy in art exhibitions, where she met more artists – and the ball started rolling.

Knowing all of this, one thinks of Amy Granat’s films differently. Most of Granat’s films in this exhibition are silent, while a select few have prominent soundtracks – such as El Matador, which is accompanied by the crackling, whirring sound of 16mm film running through its projector.

The music at first seems out of place, resonating against the white walls and concrete floor. But it eases into the rhythm of the films, particularly Chemical Scratch (Return of the Creature) and Ghostrider, transforming their disorienting, slightly chaotic, strobe light quality into something that makes sense. The films keep rhythm with the beat of the song, as if they were having a conversation.

The song, “Oui oui non non” from 1999 (the era of Amy!Pop), plays for 2-3 minutes every half hour. Someone could easily visit the exhibition more than once and still not experience the auditory art.

The magic of the song is its ability to transform a formal exhibition environment into a more casual, inhabited space. The music brings viewers out of their reverie. They look around for the source of the noise and wonder if it is happening on purpose. The presence of the music fills in the silence of the films, and even after the last note, the gallery space holds on to the energy generated during the brief musical entr’acte.

The exhibition will be on view until October 22, 2011. For more information on this exhibit and other upcoming events at White Flag, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

(Allison Fricke, Intern, 9/22/11)

Still from "Ghostwriter", 2006, Silent 16mm black & white film transferred to DVD

White Flag Projects’ office smells like sawdust and paint; a power drill echoes in the next room. Two rows of old-fashioned film projectors face a blank wall; orange and black electrical cords sneak across the floor, coiling around ladders and skirting a hanging tarp. In short, the space is in a state of minor chaos called “mounting an exhibition.” The exhibition in question is Amy Granat’s, opening next Thursday, September 8, between 6-8 PM.

Amy Granat, a St. Louis native, is known for her experimental 16-milimeter films created in her distinct visual language unified by movement, absence, dissonance, and exploration of the sublime. Granat’s films demonstrate a holistic approach to the total potential of film itself: as a technology, as a narrative form, as a physical object, and fundamentally as a document of activity transmitted through time and light.

Her most well-known films are her “scratch films”, which are exactly what they sound like: camera-less films made by scratching, drawing and punching holes in film stock. Two such earlier films will appear as part of the exhibition, Stars Way Out/White Stars for White Flag (2005/2011) and Ghostrider (2006).

Granat’s interest in motion and longstanding involvement with music, dance and collaboration are represented by two films in which Granat directs her subjects’ improvised movements, Felicia in Zurich (2009), and Lines in the Sand (2009). Both films further develop Granat’s translation of activity into form, articulating unifying conceptual relationships present throughout the artist’s entire oeuvre.

The exhibition will also include Granat’s newest work, Venice Flowers (2011). The most reductive of Granat’s films on view, Venice Flowers explores the artist’s interest in removing her familiar figurative and gestural motifs to investigate more minimal interactions among light, shadow, and projection surface, blurring the relationship between cinema and architecture.

The exhibition will open with a reception from 6-8 PM on Thursday, September 8 and will remain on view until October 22, 2011. For more information on this exhibit and other upcoming events at White Flag, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

(Allison Fricke, Intern)

White Flag doesn’t do many repeats, so our audience usually only gets one chance to see any of the artists we exhibit. It’s too bad in way, because they tend to get out of here and then BLOW UP. We’re always getting news about good things happening for artists that have been part the WFP program– and not the kind of fake junk some galleries put in these kinds of things to make it look like an artist who is doing nothing is doing something- THIS STUFF IS REAL. This is what has come in over the past few weeks:

Kansas City-based photographer Jaimie Warren had a monograph of her self-portraits published by the Aperture Foundation, not to mention a review in the last Artforum. She also performed at Deitch Projects infamous holiday party in December.  Jaimie’s exhibition at White Flag was in September 2007. THAT’S REAL.

Jacob Kassay was in January’s “One Loses One’s Classics”. There’s no way for us to confirm it without having to pick up the phone, but we hear his New York solo debut in at Eleven Rivington sold out… these days that is PRETTY DAMN REAL.

Amy Granat was already a big thing when she brought her show to WFP in May 2008, but she just got bigger. Word is the Museum of Modern Art has just acquired two of her works for their permanent collection. THAT’S REAL.

Matt Keegan’s work was part of Cinema Zero’s BENDOVER/HANGOVER show last year. This year his work will be in the much hyped “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus ” at The New Museum… and that’s a hard ticket to get (500 artists were nominated and only 50 are in.) THAT IS REAL.

If you need more of this kind of reality you can get it in April when we relaunch the White Flag newsletter.