Dara Birnbaum: Reaction

Bringing together works spanning four decades of the artist’s career, this exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College (25 June–27 November) highlights Birnbaum’s influential contributions to video and installation art. Opening with works from the mid 1970s, the exhibition reveals Birnbaum’s long-standing fascination with developments in popular culture, demonstrated by one of the artist’s best-known works, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978–9), which repurposes footage from the popular television series. Later pieces reveal the artist’s diverse practice, demonstrated by the large-scale installation Transmission Tower: Sentinel (1992) which comprises footage of the beat poet Allen Ginsberg reading the poem ‘Hom Bom!’ across eight screens, arranged along a metal structure, as a commentary on the Gulf War. The exhibition concludes with a look at the artist’s more recent works, including Arabesque (2011), which features spliced YouTube footage. Find out more on the Hessel’s website.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here

Transmission Tower: Sentinel (1992), Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (still; 1978–9), Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Attack Piece (still; 1975), Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Arabesque (2011), Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York