Willie Doherty. Passage

Alexander and Bonin is pleased to announce the opening of their newly-renovated gallery at 47 Walker Street in Tribeca on Saturday, October 15, 2016 with solo exhibitions of the work of Ree Morton, Mark Morrisroe, and Willie Doherty.

Willie Doherty’s Passage (2006), a single channel projection will be installed in the lower level video gallery. In his video installations and photographs, Doherty has addressed problems of representation, territoriality, and surveillance as well as the politics and rhetoric of identity, especially in his native Northern Ireland. Shot at night in the waste ground near a motorway that is audible in the background, Passage follows two men as they walk toward each other from opposite directions. The men are unaware of each other’s presence until they meet at an underpass. As they pass, each man looks back over his shoulder at the other and continues to walk. This moment of recognition and tension is repeated again and again in a sequence of cuts that shift from one figure to the other, confusing expectations of any potential narrative closure.