In 1936 art critic Walter Benjamin suggested that, with the omnipresence of technology in modern culture, "the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology." Over the past seven years, Los Angeles-based artist Diana Thater has developed a body of video projections that address the relationship of modern technological vision to realms of nature and beauty. In so doing, she has become an increasingly influential emerging voice in the contemporary art world.

Expanding on a traveling exhibition organized by the Portland Museum of Art to include rarely seen pieces and a new commissioned installation, the Walker Art Center will present the first American survey of Thater's work from July 13 through September 28. Curated by curatorial assistant Douglas Fogle, Diana Thater: Orchids in the Land of Technology will feature both single-channel video pieces as well as large-scale video projections tailored to the architecture of the galleries. On view will be a number of new or rarely seen examples of Thater's video projections, including Electric Mind (1996), which travels to the Walker from the Portland Museum of Art, as well as two works, Ginger Kittens (1994) and The Wicked Witch of the West (1996), not yet exhibited in the United States. In addition, this exhibition coincides with the unveiling of a new installation by Thater Nature is a language, can't you read? (1997) commissioned for the Walker's permanent collection that will be projected onto the museum's windows overlooking the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Accompanying the installation is a Hollywood-style screenplay created by Thater. Based on Pat Murphy's sci-fi story Rachel in Love, in which a chimpanzee has been given the mind of a teenage girl, Electric Mind traces a journey of self-discovery in which the chimp-girl and the reader are surprised by many sudden twists of fate.

Related programming planned in conjunction with the exhibition includes a preview party; an opening-weekend dialogue discussion between Thater and John G. Hanhardt, senior curator of film and media arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; gallery talks and tours; and a video history class for high school students. (A listing follows.)

Often compared to Impressionist painting (critic Timothy Martin has described her work as "Impressionism suddenly drugged with Futurism's love of speed"), Thater's large-scale video projections envelop viewers in color-saturated images of nature, from fields of cultivated flowers to panoramic vistas of iconic landscapes inspired by John Ford's Hollywood westerns. Thater uses the equipment necessary to show the video projections as elements in her installations, setting the video projectors, monitors, cables, and laser-disc players in plain view. Projected onto the existing architecture of the gallery--walls, corners, doorways, windows--Thater's images ask viewers to contemplate the complex relationship between the natural and man-made.

Thater's work is directly related both to a segment of experimental film history known as "structural film," as well as to the early work of first generation conceptual video artists such as Peter Campus, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman. These artists also created video environments, or environments driven by the technology of the medium itself in work that was about the phenomenon of the making of video imagery, often in the form of looped systems between camera and monitor or projector. As Thater herself explains, "If we look at the history of video, early installation is not about theatricality at all. It's about banality or ordinariness or about the medium and how video is made and how television is made." In her own work, Thater exploits today's technology to similar effect. Combining the handmade with high technology, she often alters the colored lenses of her projectors so that the single video image is decomposed into the constituent elements of a video projection: red, green, and blue. Alternately, Thater distorts these images in the editing process, laboriously separating their colors or manipulating their time sequencing frame by frame.

Contrary to her videographic predecessors, Thater's projections are not about the banality of video, but rather address the question of the beautiful and the sublime in a technological culture. It is this issue that Benjamin referred to when he spoke of "an orchid in the land of technology." In fact, the thematic thread running through all of Thater's work is her interest in nature as seen through the lens of technology. In The Wicked Witch of the West (1996) and Ginger Kittens (1994) Thater manipulates images of poppies and fields of sunflowers, respectively. In works such as Wyoming Alogon (1994) and Pape's Pumpkin (1994), the artist documents various instances of the natural American landscape, whether the majestic beauty of Sequoia National Forest in California, the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyoming, or the iconic "Western" grandeur of Monument Valley made famous by the Hollywood director John Ford, and then manipulates the resultant video footage.

The dichotomy between the natural and the man-made is complicated further by Thater's frequent use of trained animals in her work such as Shilo (1995), a 30-second spot made for MTV, or her large-scale installation piece Electric Mind (1996) which forms the centerpiece of the exhibition. In this six-video projector and two-video monitor work, Thater deliberately plays with a filmic narrative, based loosely on her screenplay of the same name, while intercutting long panoramic shots of the American Western landscape.

Thater's new work, commissioned by the Walker, is a two-part installation that expands the exhibition throughout the Walker and beyond. In the museum's Conference Room which overlooks the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Thater will apply her signature film gels to the windows so that at night, when the lights are left on, the building itself will function as a projector, shedding color-saturated light out and over the Garden. The second part of the commission will consist of a video projection onto two adjoining windows which overlook the Garden from the hallway outside of the Gallery 8 Restaurant. The work can be viewed from both sides of the window, emphasizing the way in which architecture "frames" the landscape through windows in the same manner that video and film frame the natural world. Thater's images will dance across the surfaces of the windows and will be visible only at night from outside the building.

Thater received an MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 1990, where she now teaches. Since that time, she has participated in a number of group exhibitions as well as solo shows at venues such as the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; the Witte de With in Rotterdam, Netherlands; and the Portland Museum of Art. In 1995, she won second prize for her work at the Kwangju Biennale in Kwangju, Korea. John G. Hanhardt is quoted in a New York Times article on Thater (February 4, 1996) as saying that she is "on the leading edge of a new generation of artist who is really expanding the potential of [video]." This year alone, Thater's work has been featured in both the Whitney Biennial (her second consecutive appearance) and the Münster Sculpture Project in Germany.

Diana Thater: Electric Mind and Recent Works was organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Kathryn Kanjo, curator of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is sponsored, in part, by Tektronix, with additional support from the Lannan Foundation.

Support for the Walker Art Center's presentation is provided by the Dayton's Frango Fund. 3M MP8650 multimedia projectors donated by 3M. Major support for Walker Art Center programs is provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Bush Foundation, the Northwest Area Foundation, Target Stores, Dayton's, and Mervyn's by the Dayton Hudson Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, the General Mills Foundation, the Institute of Museum Services, Burnet Realty, the American Express Minnesota Philanthropic Program, the Honeywell Foundation, The Cargill Foundation, The Regis Foundation, The St. Paul Companies, Inc., the 3M Foundation, and our members. Northwest Airlines, Inc. is the Official Airline of the Walker Art Center.

Following its presentation at the Walker as part of Diana Thater: Orchids in the Land of Technology, Electric Mind and Recent Works will travel to the University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

DIANA THATER: ORCHIDS IN THE LAND OF TECHNOLOGY RELATED EVENTS

Opening Weekend

Preview Party
Saturday, July 12, 9 pm - 12 midnight
$10 Walker members; $20 non-members
This evening celebration features hors d'oeuvres, a cash bar, and a live performance by Low, Duluth natives now making the national music scene with their hypnotic take on alternative rock. Call (612) 375-7622 for ticket and membership information.

Dialogue: Diana Thater and John G. Hanhardt
Sunday, July 13, 3 pm
$6 ($3)
Walker Auditorium
John G. Hanhardt, senior curator of film and media arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, will present a brief lecture on the history of the projected image from the 17th-century development of the magic lantern to contemporary video projection. After his talk, Hanhardt will engage Thater in a discussion about her work, moderated by exhibition curator Douglas Fogle.

Art Talks

Geoffrey Batchen: Electric Mind Games
Thursday, July 31, 7 pm
$6 ($3)
Batchen, associate professor of the history of photography at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, will discuss the digital revolution, technoculture, and their relationship to Thater's video projections.

Dr. Peter Verbeek: Universal Mind: Thought and Behavior of our Primate Cousins
Sunday, August 10, 3 pm
$6 ($3)
Thater's video projection installation Electric Mind is based on the artist's sci-fi screenplay, which tells of a scientist who saves the "electric mind" of his deceased daughter in the body of a chimp. Dr. Verbeek, an artist and psychobiologist and National Service Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota, will discuss chimpanzee behavior and relate it to Thater's project.

Second Sunday Tour
Crossing Boundaries
Sunday, July 13, 2 pm
Free with Gallery Admission; meet in the Walker lobby
Take a look at some contemporary artists who cross traditional boundaries between media to create innovative, interdisciplinary artistic projects. Examine the social, economic, political, and artistic context involved in the creation of these diverse works. Included on the tour will be the video projections of Diana Thater and works by Matthew Barney, Bruce Nauman, and Georgina Starr.

Teen Program
Flick: Video History and the Art of Diana Thater
Thursdays, July 10≠August 21, 6≠8 pm
Free
Walker Lecture Room
This summer class offers an opportunity for high school juniors and seniors to explore video art history. Experience the multifaceted presence of video in contemporary art with national and local artists and critics. The class also features special screenings from Video Data Bank and selections from the Walker's diverse film and video archive. Though designed for high school students, this class is also open to the general public beginning July 17. For more information, contact Walker Art Center Teen Programs at (612) 375-7572. Teen programs are made possible with funds from the Northwest Area Foundation and the Surdna Foundation.