Gallery on Demand

By Johnny Ray Huston

Walk through a room containing Nina Katchadourian’s funny wall of framed photos charting a consumer goods icon family tree (Mr. Clean and one of the Brawny guys are, of course, related) to the front desk of Catharine Clark Gallery. There, you can access one of the site’s best features. Recently installed and just beginning to grow, Video on Demand allows you to choose videos from the gallery’s extensive library of video work by artists including Katchadourian, Cristoph Draeger (whose “Schizo” plays off of “Psycho”-like shower imagery), and collaborators Aaron Plant, Timothy Cummings, and Shane Francis.

During a recent visit, I took in Bay Guardian Goldie winner Julia Page’s “Heir Apparent,“a 2004 silent short that isolates a few ghost-pixel moments from the childhoods of presidential daughters such as Amy Carter. The emphasis is on Democrats. Scott Roberts’ 2002 “My Favorite Character is a Wizard” is a too-good-for-network-TV animation that depicts various Gencon gaming attendees in their favorite imagined guises. During my next trip to the gallery I hope to check out some of Packard Jennings’ work, which seems so politically sharp that it’s scary.

09.06.2006