For ‘Flash Art’ magazine
For the final show of the gallery’s 30th anniversary year, Ronald Feldman F.A. proved its vitality with an exhibition of videos by young artist Rico Gatson. Gatson, a standout in last summer’s popular ‘Freestyle’ group show in Harlem, delves into the Hollywood archives for his material. Using video editing software, he selects films as diverse as ‘Alien’, ‘King Kong’ and ‘Superfly’ and then subjects them to an editing process in which a quarter of the film screen is mirrored, resulting in an intense, kaleidoscopic effect. The show stopper is ‘Departure,’ in which Gatson condenses a scene from the movie ‘Alien’ into an intense series of pans and zooms featuring the determined but petrified protagonist as she exits the exploding ship. Another highlight, “Jungle, Jungle” presents two sequences of human sacrifice made in the 1933 classic film ‘King Kong.’ Gatson maintains a dual focus on the representation of African Americans in film, and on the many faces of fear. Whether the videos feature a giant, raging gorilla, or a gruesome alien, the result is a mini-lexicon of terror that forces viewers to confront their own fears – a task which is never more relevant than now.