Kenneth Shorr’s videos resist categorization but they could most accurately be described as narrative performances. His straightforward manner of relating stories in talking-head style belies the complexity of his tales. Through the use of repetition and editing he creates intriguing, and sometimes bawdy, broken narratives. The stories begin at the end, or the middle, or somewhere we’re not quite familiar with. The story proceeds but we don’t know exactly where it’s going. Building upon themselves, the pieces do begin to add up.

In one recent work, Staring Is Caring, Shorr looks at the camera and says “It’s difficult to know if you’re getting it; if I’m getting through to you. It’s difficult to know…if you really understand. It’s difficult to know how others will take it…. But the most important thing is; I don’t know how you’ll take it…. What will your reaction be? Stony silence? Indifference? Outrage? And those are just a fraction of possible responses you could have.” In the narrative of the story, he is addressing someone sitting in front of him, someone to whom he is about to relate some bad news but, listening to him, he could just as easily be wondering how the viewer, standing there in front of him, will respond to or understand his story.

This exhibition will be a looped projection of three works, Drip,The Border, and Staring Is Caring.