Tornado Warning, an exhibition of new works by Charles Atlas opens next week at Vilma Gold Gallery in London. The Art21 artist’s videos often take dance and performance as their point of departure, creating collaborations between the two genres that journey them from traditional documentary to provocative and ironic minglings where narration and fiction overlap. Recently Atlas has taken interest in real-time video as stand-alone, on-stage or live electronic improvisations, coupling the spontaneity of the medium with meticulous formal precision to create visually arresting and challenging new environments.
Several new installations comprise the Vilma Gold exhibition, including the eponymous Tornado Warning, a five-channel video work installed throughout the gallery space that explore the intersection between chaos and order arising from Atlas’ early memories of tornado warnings in his childhood town of St Louis, Missouri. Tornado Alley consists of two rooms that contrast in appearance, form, content and atmosphere, utilizing montage to fashion a large scale installation “that delves into the powers of perception, triggering memory and submerging the viewer in his dream like world.”
Tornado Warning opens November 14 and runs through December 7.
