Jennifer West's First Italian Museum Solo Show at MAN Nuoro

Jennifer West's first solo museum exhibition in Italy, 'Action Movies, Painted Films and History Collage,' opened at the Museo d'Arte della Provincia di Nuoro (MAN) in Sardinia. Curated by Lorenzo Giusti, the show spans twelve years of the California-based artist's work, largely unknown to Italian audiences. The exhibition title references her practice: 'action movies' in a Viennese performative sense, painted films akin to Mario Schifano's television experiments, and history collage working with film title sequences, distinct from Christian Marclay's 'The Clock.' The most recent work, 'Film Title Poem' (2016), is her only sound film, hypnotically stringing together titles that evoke scenes and plots, with the filmstrip scratched, engraved, and perforated from use. Earlier works include 'Salt Crystal Spiral Jetty Dead Sea Five Years Film' (2013), a non-film created over five years using the salt lake where Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty was built and the Dead Sea. The film itself underwent cooking, forgetting, violence, and discarding, embodying its materiality. A documentary about its genesis accompanies the work. After the opening, West departed for a small island, taking with her a 'pizza' containing one of her most beloved films by a major Italian director.