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Adaptation: Video Installations by Ben-Ner, Herrera, Sullivan, and Sussman & The Rufus Corporation

January 31 – May 4, 2008

While adaptation is a common practice in popular culture, it is perhaps less well known as a practice in contemporary art. This exhibition looked at the use of adaptation in the work of four leading artists: Guy Ben-Ner, Arturo Herrera, Catherine Sullivan, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation. These artists have transformed source material to make their own adapted works of art, re-envisioning classic literature, painting, film, ballet, and even e-mail as new video installations.

Adaptation is a tightly focused exhibition: each of the four artists is represented by one or two significant video installations. The works include Guy Ben-Ner’s Moby Dick (2000) and Wild Boy (2004), respectively adapted from Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel and François Truffaut’s film L’enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970); Arturo Herrera’s Les Noces (The Wedding, 2007), an animated adaptation of the ballet of the same name by Igor Stravinsky; Catherine Sullivan’s Triangle of Need (2007), which builds from a notorious and ubiquitous type of mass e-mail scam, as well as a smaller-scale new work developed in collaboration with students from the University of Chicago; and Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation’s The Rape of the Sabine Women (2006), a feature-length contemporary retelling of the Roman myth that draws inspiration from an eighteenth-century painting.

While addressing questions of fidelity and creativity, the exhibition generates new understanding of the use of adaptation as a practice in contemporary art. It includes the United States museum premieres of The Rape of the Sabine Women and Les Noces, Herrera’s first video installation.

Tour Dates: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, November 22, 2008 – March 22, 2009; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, May 8 – August 16, 2009; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 17, 2010 – January 9, 2011.

Curator: Stephanie Smith, Smart Museum Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art.

This exhibition is supported by the Office of the Provost and the Arts Council, University of Chicago, the Feitler Family Fund, Larry and Marilyn Fields, Susan and Lewis Manilow, Dirk Denison, and the members and friends of the Smart Museum.

Presented in the Richard and Mary L. Gray Special Exhibition Gallery.

Top: Visitors watch Guy Ben-Ner's Wild Boy (2004) from a carpeted hill that re-creates the woodland set the artist built in his kitchen. Photo by Jim Newberry.