Mishmash Ever After

There’s a reason Ryan Trecartin has been called the first YouTube art star. For one, you don’t even have to visit a museum to see his work. All you have to do is log online to check out many of his pulse-pounding flicks now screening at the Museum of Contemporary Art (770 NE 125th St., North Miami) as part of Trecartin’s “Any Ever,” a seven-movie epic video he produced in the Big Mango between 2009 and 2010 along with collaborator Lizzie Fitch. Trecartin, who was in Miami for an artist’s residency program while helming his hallucinatory movies, was also assisted by scores of others, including friends and artists, with a handful of professional child actors tossed into his celluloid salad as well. A digital-age progeny, Trecartin is known for strip-mining our media-saturated, overmerchandized culture to create garish imagery that not only assaults the peepers but also distills the virtual cacophony of the internet, reality TV, and Twitter feeds with a schizzy, cheese-ball squalor at times, insalubrious and mesmerizing to behold. He blurs and redefines signifiers of race, gender, and sexuality and the very notion of fixed identity, twisting language and images of consumer and popular culture to their breaking points. But trust us, it’s a lot more fun to see the movies spooled together at MoCA, where the sets and props for Trecartin’s opus will also be on display rather than alone at home on the internet. This marks the first time “Any Ever” has been exhibited in its entirety in the South Florida that plays a big role in Trecartin’s sensational, can’t-miss, multinarrative stories. There is an opening reception for the film on Thursday at 6 p.m. with tickets costing $10 (but free for MoCA members). An afterparty follows with tickets costing $15 (but, again, free for members). The film will be shown through September 4. Call 305-893-6211, or visit mocanomi.org.
Thu., June 23, 7 p.m., 2011