Tony Cokes works in modules and fragments. Often, installation forms are part of the trajectory of his work: sometimes they have been productive contexts from which individual works are later drawn; other times, clusters of existing short works are spatialized and juxtaposed into installations. This presentation will examine selected excerpts from recent installation projects in Los Angeles and Vienna that will likely find their way to become short autonomous pieces, or components in other installations.
For the recent exhibition/installation project Could you visit me in dreams? (2018), Cokes constructed an alternative guide to Vienna mostly from internet sources—encompassing historical facts, club descriptions, Freud and Kafka anecdotes, and recent news to offer a diverse, speculative/future view of the city as a site of encounter.
His most recent installation Della's House (2019) is composed of two sets of paired LED panels and cube monitors, and features two sections—"The Will & The Way" and "The Queen is Dead…"—that play with the legibility of architectural space and historic black creative figures. The initial context was the private residence of mid-century Los Angeles architect Paul Revere Williams. Cokes' response to Williams' work draws from the architect's own words and sets them to music by Radiohead remixed by several artists. For "The Queen is Dead…," Cokes redeploys parts from an ensemble of articles exploring the political resonances and legacies of Aretha Franklin, with Franklin's own music and a techno rework by Floorplan/Robert Hood as accompaniment.
Tony Cokes makes video, installation, print, sound, and other works that reframe appropriated texts to reflect on capitalism, subjectivity, knowledge, and pleasure. He has shown works internationally at venues including Centre Georges Pompidou and La Cinémathèque Française, Paris; Museum of Modern Art and Whiney Museum, New York; ZKM, Karlsruhe; and REDCAT, Los Angeles. Cokes has screened works in festivals including the Berlin Biennale X; Rotterdam International Film Festival; Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid; and the Oberhausen Short Film Festival. His work is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.
Image: Tony Cokes, Could you visit me in dreams?, 2018. Installation view at Galerie Nathalie Halgand, Vienna.