Focus Gallery: Mark Boulos opening reception and artist talk
Thursday, April 21, 2011 ï 6-9pm
Talk begins 6:30pm, doors open 6pm (Seating is limited. First come, first seated.)
Preview and reception 7:30-9pm
Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler Street
Miami, Florida 33130

MAM members free, Non-members $10
RSVP to RSVP@miamiartmuseum.org

Miami Art Museum will premiere a newly-acquired video installation by Mark Boulos, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (2008), on Thursday, April 21, 2011. The installation will open with a talk by Boulos beginning at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm), followed by a preview and reception from 7:30 until 9pm. Boulos, an artist-filmmaker working in London and Amsterdam, makes multi-screen documentary videos about religious ecstasy and political militancy. All That Is Solid Melts into Air is a two-channel video installation, with images screened on opposite walls of a room. In the projected images the corporate colonization of Nigerian oil resources creates the occasion for a contrast of cultures and beliefs. All That Is Solid Melts into Air will be on view in the Focus Gallery section of Miami Art Museum’s Permanent Collection installation from Friday, April 22, 2011 through Sunday, July 31, 2011.

In the installation, one screen features images shot in the Niger delta, featuring militants of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has declared ‘total war’ on the foreign oil corporations that extract and export oil from their territory. The guerillas are shown preparing themselves for battle and asking for blessings from Egbisu, their god of justice and war, who inspires and protects them from bullets. On the opposite screen are traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodities exchange in the world, who speculate on oil and other commodity futures. Paradoxically, Boulos’ video purposely underscores the similarities as well as the differences between these two groups at opposite ends of the oil “pipeline:” Members of each group appear in costume, perform ritualized actions, and whip themselves into emotional frenzies. Through this juxtaposition, Boulos highlights the combination of emotional intensity and ideological abstraction that characterizes both groups.

When All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the Sydney Biennial in 2008, Art in America hailed Boulos as “one of the real discoveries of the exhibition,” and praised the video installation as “lush and enthralling.” When it was presented at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, LA Weekly called it “visceral.” Of his 2010 exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, which included All That Is Solid Melts into Air, the Vancouver Observer wrote, “At first blush this work seems more like documentary filmmaking than art. But Boulos’ creative juxtapositions and keen eye for detail transports his work to a higher, poetic level.”

All That Is Solid Melts into Air premiered at the 16th Biennale of Sydney in 2008 and has been shown at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2008, the Berlin Biennial in 2010, and the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. The video was acquired by MAM in 2010 when a group of museum supporters saw it at the Berlin Biennial and contributed the funds to purchase it. This is the first time it is being shown at MAM.

Mark Boulos studied visual art at the Rijksakademie in Holland as a Fulbright Scholar, documentary filmmaking at National Film and Television School in England, and philosophy at Swarthmore College and Deep Springs College in USA. He has filmed guerrillas in the Philippines (No Permanent Address, 2010), oil warriors and commodities traders in Nigeria and Chicago (All That Is Solid Melts into Air, 2008), and religious mystics in London and Syria, (The Word Was God, 2006 and The Gates of Damascus, 2005). He has had solo presentations at the Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver, Ar-Ge Kunst in Bolzano, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His group shows include the Thessaloniki Biennale 2009, the Sydney Biennale 2008, EASTinternational 2006 at the Norwich Gallery, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2005 at the Barbican, and Beck’s Futures 2004 at the ICA London. His work has been supported by Film London, the Arts Council England, the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Fund, the Netherlands Film Funds, and the Netherlands Funds for Visual Arts (Fonds BKVB).

Exhibition organization and support

Focus Gallery: Mark Boulos is organized by Miami Art Museum and supported by donations to MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund.

Mark Boulos
All That Is Solid Melts into Air, 2008
Two-channel video installation
Running time: ca. 15 minutes
Collection Miami Art Museum, gift of Ana Carolina & Luiz Guilherme Affonso, Steven and Kathleen Guttman, Patricia and William Kleh, Monique and Alex Halberstein, Carole and Ira Hall and Aymee and Peter Zubizarreta, commemorating the 2010 MAM International Committee visit to Berlin, Germany.