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The artist-turned-director discovers new depths in “Bass,” an immersive environment of light and sound in Dia Beacon, connected to Black history and “where we can go from here. “
By Siddhartha Mitter
When the Dia Art Foundation invited Steve McQueen to create a painting for their museum in Beacon, New York, the curators assumed he would propose a film or video project. It made sense: McQueen is the British director of the Oscar-winning film for best picture. 12 Years a Slave” (2013) and other acclaimed films such as “The Hunger” and “The Shame. “And long before that, he was already a fresh and outstanding artist, known for his experimental films with a wide variety of themes, durations, and presentations. methods, in museum galleries.
In a remarkable work, “Western Deep” (2002), he immersed the audience in the joy of the staff of a gold mine in South Africa. The installation required a screening room in pitch darkness and the film began with a six-minute scene from the descent into the well.
Awarded the British Pavilion exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2009, he screened “Giardini”, a film on two giant screens depicting the gardens surrounding the National Pavilions, but filmed in the middle of winter, foggy and grey, with lost and dark objects. Dogs. The church bells in the distance.
The last time Donna De Salvo, Dia’s senior assistant curator, worked with McQueen, in 2016, she was lead curator at the Whitney Museum, where they showed “End Credits. “American actor and activist Paul Robeson, playing on two giant screens facing each other on the museum’s empty fifth floor, flipped through redacted documents from Robeson’s FBI warehouse. It lasted only about thirteen hours.
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