Ballroom Marfa, Marfa Texas, USA
Alicia Ritson, curator
Wayne's World, 2003
8’00”
DVD
Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York
Ryan Trecartin was born in Webster, Texas, USA in 1981. He graduated with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. He is among an emerging wave of artists who have grown up with the internet, and who are consequently making work informed by the evolution of net aesthetics, the hyperactivity of the world wide web and the proliferation of democratic broadcasting platforms like YouTube.
One of the artist’s first videos, the first in which he appears in front of the camera and presents himself as a ‘a video kid. Digital’. In this work, Trecartin strips the narrative right back to a video that addresses directly the artist’s process. He directs attention to the process of transmitting personalities through various media, and to the narrowing disjuncture between on-screen image and off-screen reality.