Stuart Croft

Eröffnung: Freitag, 4. Juli 2008, 18 bis 21 Uhr

FRED is delighted to announce the solo exhibition of Stuart Croft's new film work, DRIVE IN and THE DEATH WALTZ

DRIVE IN The genre of the classic road movie habitually depicts fugitives on the run; outlaw couples whose self-destructive fate is sealed from the opening credits. The protagonists can, in turn, be signposted towards existential discovery by a myriad of characters encountered on the road.

In DRIVE IN, Stuart Croft's gallery-based rendition of the road movie genre, none of this happens. His movie-couple encounter no violence, meet no fateful ending and find no resolve. Instead, their road journey is ceaseless. They meet no one and arrive nowhere.

DRIVE IN features two characters whose car glides through a nameless, rain-soaked city at night. The passenger, a super-confident American woman in her late twenties, recounts a “desert island” joke to a middle-aged male driver, who remains unnervingly silent throughout. The woman's 'joke' is a classic but barely disguised male fantasy: a pathetic guy, washed up on a paradise island, stumbles across the woman of his dreams. The guy, open-jawed, falls hopelessly in love. And the perfect relationship ensues.

However, Croft has removed the joke's punchline so that, somewhat perversely, it never ends. Both joke and journey recur in the gallery space as a seamlessly conjoined circle. Furthermore, the woman delivers her monologue as a diatribe; a caustic indictment discharged toward her male companion. The fantasy image of utopian paradise, rendered via the desert island joke, collides with the idealised image of the city, rendered through the movie camera.

Shot on celluloid and on the road with the full apparatus of a film crew, DRIVE IN appears to be a convincing slice of a contemporary feature film. Yet with endlessness at the core of Croft's scriptwriting, editing and gallery installation, he infinitely denies linear cinematic assurances.

THE DEATH WALTZ This latter work, Croft's newest film piece, marries an endless Buñelian dinner party with a chilling military ghost story, shot in Hammer House style by its own cast of twelve actors.

Stuart Croft is an artist/filmmaker based in London. Since completing his MA at Chelsea College of Art in 1998, he has shown his work widely in galleries and museums in the UK, Europe and the USA, including FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool; Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy; PS1/MoMA, New York; Fiedler Contemporary, Cologne; White Box, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Espai Ubu, Barcelona; The Block Space, Brisbane; EFA Gallery, New York. Stuart Croft is a tutor and teaching fellow at the Royal College of Art, London.

Stuart Croft
DRIVE IN / THE DEATH WALTZ