FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Opening reception: Friday, September 8, 6–8 pm

Friedrich Petzel Gallery, 535 W. 22 Street
Reena Spaulings Fine Art, 165 East Broadway
Electronic Arts Intermix, 535 W. 22 Street

Seth Price's show appears in three venues: Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). The show considers film and video, and how the moving image is used and circulated today, whether in the art world or in more popular forums. At Friedrich Petzel Gallery and Reena Spaulings, Price exhibits two new, related films, each offering a different approach to these questions. At EAI, the artists' video distributor located just upstairs from Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Price releases a new video for widespread distribution.

Checklist:

Digital Video Effect: "Editions". 2006. 10 min.
At EAI, Price debuts a video that serves as a sampler of his editioned videos to date, all of which have been sold through Reena Spaulings and Friedrich Petzel Gallery. Here, fragments of sound and image from the editions have been brought together, yielding a montage that, while bordering on incoherence, provides access to these publicly unavailable artworks. As with all EAI videos, the piece will be a low-priced, unlimited multiple, with screening rights, to be rented and sold to art centers, film festivals, and schools. Price's piece, or any others in the extensive collection, can be seen in EAI's viewing room (by appointment only; call 212-337-0680; preview an online video clip at eai.org). This piece will remain available indefinitely after the rest of the show closes.

Untitled Film, Right. 2006. 16mm film. 15 min.
At Friedrich Petzel Gallery, Price shows a film based on a clip purchased from an online distributor of "multi-use video backgrounds". Referred to as "gak" by those in the industry, such video loops serve as content aids in presentations, promotions, and advertisements, as well as more serious applications, like TV news backdrops. Price's purchase of this computer-generated, six-second clip includes screening rights, and he has visually altered the gak and repeated it 150 times before transferring the digital file to film.

Untitled Film, Left. 2006. 16mm film. 10 min.
At Reena Spaulings, Price installs a film transfer edition of his EAI video Digital Editing Effect: "Editions". The piece juxtaposes disparate authors, editing strategies, and histories, yielding a work in the essay-film tradition, at once lyrical and messy, highly-edited and arbitrarily composed.

Addresses. 2006. Etchings with ink and oil on Arches paper. Printed at CNEAI, Paris.
In a series of screen prints on plastic film executed over the last year, Price used a frame-still from a popular Jihadi propaganda video clip (which remains widely available online). At Friedrich Petzel Gallery, he presents a related series of etchings, featuring images available at various internet sites.

Notes. 2005–2006.
Price often writes his own, somewhat oblique, press releases, which have been called "loopy" and "millenarian". His writing does make an appearance in this show, albeit mainly as a decorative motif: selections from the artist's working notes on film & video executed over the last year, which appear at Reena Spaulings. A facsimile book of the notes is also available.

This will be Seth Price's first exhibition at Friedrich Petzel Gallery. The exhibition will open on September 8, with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m., and will be on view through September 30, 2006. Friedrich Petzel Gallery is located at 535 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011. For further information, please contact the gallery at info@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.