VIENNA.- Vienna Secession presents Sharon Lockhart - Lunch Break, on view through January 18, 2009. Over the last 15 years US-American artist Sharon Lockhart has made films and photographs that frame moments of everyday life while exploring the subtle relationships between the two mediums. Shown for the first time at the Secession, Lockhart’s latest films and accompanying photographic series describe a specific place and time: Maine’s Bath Iron Works at the start of the 21st century. Lockhart spent the last year looking at the lives of workers in the historic shipyard and each of the five projects included in the exhibition examines a different element of their everyday experience.
In the Hauptraum Lockhart will install the film LUNCH BREAK. LUNCH BREAK features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard. Contrary to her previous films, the camera is untethered and, as it slowly moves down the corridor, we experience what was a brief interval in the workday schedule expanded into a sustained gaze. Lined with lockers, the hallway seems not only an industrial nexus but also a social one, its surfaces containing a history of self-expression and customization. Over the course of the lunch break we see workers engaged in a wide range of activities--reading, sleeping, talking--in addition to actually eating their midday meal. The soundtrack is a composition designed in collaboration with composer Becky Allen and filmmaker James Benning, in which industrial sounds, music, and voices slowly merge and intertwine. Together, picture and sound provide an extended meditation on a moment of respite from productive labor.
Alongside the projection Lockhart will exhibit three suites of photographs: a set of tableaus in which workers interact around both makeshift and institutional dining tables, a collection of the various independent businesses workers have established to provide coffee, hot dogs, candy bars and snacks, and series of more formalized portraits of the workers’ lunch boxes. In each case, the worker is both framed by and frames the work place.
The last element in the exhibition is the fittingly titled EXIT. Filmed over a five-day workweek, each of the five takes that comprise EXIT shows the long progression of workers leaving the Bath Iron Works at the end of their shift. Each take starts with a title card stating the day of the week, and then begins a daily routine that varies greatly from day to day. Reminiscent of Louis Lumiere's film, Leaving the Lumiere Factory, EXIT emphasizes the flow of time and the nuances of daily experience.
SHARON LOCKHART, born in 1964 in Norwood/Massachusetts, lives and works in Los Angeles.
SOLO SHOWS (Selection): 2008 Lunch Break, Secession; Kunstverein in Hamburg; 2006 Pine Flat, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Arthur M.Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Museu do Chiado – Museu Nacional de Arte Contemporanea; Pine Flat Portrait Studio, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Pine Flat, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Pine Flat Portrait Studio, neugerriemschneider, Berlin; 2005 Pine Flat, Sala Rekalde, Bilbao; 2004 Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo; NO-no, neugerriemschneider, Berlin; 2003 Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; 2001 Interview Locations / Family Photographs, Blum & Poe, Santa Monica: 2000 MAK- Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna; Teatro Amazonas, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Zürich / Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
GROUP SHOWS (Selection): 2008 55th Carnegie International, CMOA, Pittsburgh; 2007 Hiram, Galleria Antonio Ferrara, Reggio Emilia; Volksgarten. Die Politik der Zugehörigkeit, Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum; Lights, Camera Action. Artists' Films for the Cinema, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 2006 Blind Date. Neuerwerbungen der Sammlung Deutsche Bank, Prälatur des ehemaligen Benediktinerklosters and Galerie Kunstforum, Altes Haus, Seligenstadt; Why Picture Now, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; 2005 Southern Exposure, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Frontiers: Collecting the Art of Our Time, Worcester Art Museum; En attente, Casino Luxembourg, Forum d’art contemporain; An Aside Camden Arts Centre, London; At Years End, Rethinking The Family of Man, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam; 2004 Los Usos de la Imagen, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano De Buenos Aires; Eye Spy, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Accrochage, Jan Mot, Brussels; Videodreams: between the cinematic and the theatrical, Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum; The Big Nothing, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; 2003 Hecho en mexico, Institute of Contemprary Art, Boston; Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; Home and Away, Vancouver Art Gallery; Strange Days, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Portraiture, Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, Los Angeles; Fast Forward. Media Art Sammlung Goetz, Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; 2002 My modern summer, Galerie Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam; Doug Aitken - Sharon Lockhart, Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels; Staged: Contemporary Photography by Gregory Crewdson, Rosemary Laing and Sharon Lockhart, Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; Andere Räume; Kunstverein Hamburg.
