Description

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) hosts an online streaming program of a selection of Anthony Ramos’s video-performances circa 1972-1975, a fertile period for the artist then based in Los Angeles. Ramos’s interest in time and duration stems in part from his long friendship with Allan Kaprow, with whom he studied and worked under as a teaching assistant, and who housed him following his imprisonment for conscientious objection. Ramos met Kaprow while a student at the Southern Illinois University and participated in a handful of the artist’s iconic “happenings,” including the ambitious 1967 event Fluids,, which involved the construction of several intricate igloos across Pasadena. He was later part of a coterie of West coast figures inspired by Kaprow to mount their own interventions—Ramos often staged prankish, ephemeral art events with fellow artists Joe Ray and Lowell Darling, who appear in the two plastic bag videos. A key theme for Ramos is tension and discomfort: his fatigue during Balloon Nose Blow-Up (1972), the terror of confinement in Plastic Bag Tie-Up (1972) and Water Plastic Bag (1973), and the gluttony and racial stereotype in Watermelon Heaven (1972). His own body often becomes a vector in the work: his use of body paint in State of the Union (1973), the mannequin appendages and nudity in Identity (1973), and the experiment in race-bending made in conjunction with his then-wife Ann Ramos in the two-channel installation Black and White (1975). Available through April 31.

Watch here.

Part of Nor Was This All By Any Means: A Career-Spanning Series with Anthony Ramos