P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Avenue, 718-784-2084
Long Island City
February 11 - April 16, 2007
Web Site
The Beauty of Friends Being Together Quartet, is an exhibition comprised of films and film stills by the celebrated artist Jonas Mekas. Mekas is considered an inventor of Diarist Cinema – an intimate first-person collision of poetry, fiction, documentary, and formal experimentation through which any autobiographical themes can be explored – and is also renowned for his extensive film archive. Such seminal and varied components of his oeuvre will be intimately presented in the Mini-Kunsthalle from February 11 through April 16, 2007.
Drawing on thousands of hours of film footage, from spontaneous events and happenings of everyday life to the most intimate sequences of his personal relationships with friends from various times and places in New York City and beyond, this exhibition features for the first time the multi-channel installation “Four Quartets”: The Destruction Quartet; The Education of Sebastian, or Egypt Regained; Farewell to SoHo; and Martin Scorsese: An American Filmmaker at Work. Also on view will be The Sixties Quartet including Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol, Scenes from the Life of George Maciunas, To John and Yoko with Love, and This Side of Paradise.
In addition to the film presentation, the exhibition also includes 40 portraits of friends selected from individual film frames, 40 stills from footage of New York City, and his recent 40 films made as an introduction for the podcast project 365 Films – one sequence shot each day of the year (also available on www.jonasmekas.com).