Ryan Trecartin (1981) is one of the most innovative artists working in video today. Ryan Trecartin’s films are a mixture of performance art, sitcoms, and hypnotic digital collages, as if they were the result of a collaboration between Bosch and Keith Haring, or as if Facebook had had a nightmare.

Filmed in a former Masonic temple in Los Angeles—a five-story labyrinth of large, cavernous rooms, resembling a windowless convention center—Temple Time unfolds like a horror movie expedition of a group of friends to a wild campground. Exploring an alternative idea of a frightening wilderness, the characters talk about what they see rather than how they feel, giving the impression that everything they encounter is a discovery. For some characters, these discoveries emerge as memories of events that are about to repeat themselves—the past and the future seem to occur simultaneously through overlapping layers of reality. The use of different video capture technologies—including handheld cameras, drones, and GoPro action cameras mounted on the actors’ bodies—offers numerous perspectives and points of view, reinforcing Ryan Trecartin’s exploration of cinematic discontinuities.

Trecartin collaborates with actors from his family or circle of friends to perform sophisticated digital manipulations with materials taken from the Internet and pop culture, wild animations, and aestheticized scenarios and performances. His work triggers worlds where consumer culture is amplified to absurd qualities or nihilistic proportions, where characters seek to find meaning in their lives. With a virtuoso use of colors, shapes, hysterical performances, and mind-blowing montages, he produces sublime effects that approach an unknown and true form of reality.

Temple Time, 2016

Digital video, 5.1 soundtrack, duration 54:32, 3D Animations with Rhett LaRue
© Ryan Trecartin
Courtesy the artist, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Sprüth Magers