Ryan Trecartin's RE'SEARCH WAIT Exhibit Will Premiere at NGV, 5/15

American video and multimedia artist Ryan Trecartin will present his first major Australian exhibition at the NGV this May. From his work being a highlight of the 2013 Venice Biennale, to co-curating New York's New Museum Triennial this year to great acclaim, Trecartin is seen as a major artistic figure of the post-internet age. An immersive theatrette resembling an uber-real teenage lounge room will be created where guests will be enveloped into Trecartin's world through a rolling display of his frenetically paced films.

'Ryan Trecartin is recognised as one of the most inventive and exciting young artists working today and his work is renowned for its intersection of art and the internet,' said Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV. 'After exciting turns at the Venice Biennale and New York's New Museum, the NGV is delighted to be hosting Trecartin's first solo Australian exhibition and housing his first major Australian acquisition.'

Re'Search Wait'S is a quartet of Trecartin's films from 2009-10, comprising Ready, The Re'Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement and Temp Stop which together form an immersive and visceral essay on consumerism and identity, played out in a twisted milieu of excess and narcissism.

The films depict a procession of unhinged teenagers, whose narcissistic, neurotic and slightly demented but very contemporary lives unfold before us in glorious excess. They involve multi-linear narratives set within a complicated industry predicated on the power of metaphysically evolved market research, where the base commodities are personality traits. Characters are wrapped in knots as their every action is studied, the findings dictating the brands that pilot everything they do.

Unique in their conception and depiction, the films feature overwrought and overstimulated narratives symbolic of contemporary pop, consumer and online cultures. Informed by reality television shows, MTV, personal webcams, karaoke and internet-based vlogs (video-blogs), and edited at a frenetic pace, which characterises the multi-sensory density of internet and screen experience, the work offers a wild and confronting exploration of identity in the post-internet age.

The films will be displayed in the newly acquired 'sculptural theatre' Available Sync, 2011, by Trecartin and long-time collaborator Lizzie Fitch, a collaboration that has remained central to Trecartin's practice since they were first-year students of Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. Available Sync, 2011 is a major installation of generic IKEA furniture arranged to create a viewing space that resembles a teenager's lounge room. The presentation of Available Sync marks the first time an Australian institution has acquired or displayed one of these unique theatrette environments.

The acquisition of Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, Re'Search Wait'S is generously supported by the Loti and Victor Smorgon Fund.

"To put it simply, [Ryan] Trecartin ... is the most consequential artist to have emerged since the 1980s."
Peter Schjeldahl, New Yorker

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