giu sotto

Australia was definitely in my top five faves for pavilions this year. It was the sexiest, grittiest, most seductive compilation of sensations. Shaun Gladwell's MADDESTMAXIMVS centered on slowed-footage video with more than compelling formal elements. Break dancing, bmx-ing, and other physical feats are neither pictured nor watched....Gladwell slows these activities down to a place in between a captured image and a moving scene. The ambient background noise transforms these dramatic movements into meditative experiences that quite beautifully allow us to see the smallest transfigurations of the human body in extreme and dynamic positions. Apology to Roadkill was eerily both stereotypical and unexpected. Nothing more than a silhouette of a man cradles the carcasses of grey kangaroos into the Australian distance. Rough and gentle, familiar and unknown, natural and hopeless and sad and sweet.....in a word (at least in my book) - successful.