ANDREW NEEL + ELIZABETH NEEL: “EVENT”, January 7 – February 2, 2006, Freight + Volume, New York


The Events are elusive to the viewer, in that both cause and effect are de-contextualized from an implied narrative. In this way, the artists offer a rare opportunity to confront our habitual assumptions with which meaning is created. Both perspectives – that of witness and writer – encourage a heightened awareness of how frequently narrative seduces its audience into consuming information without question by drawing it into a seamless text.

Like lost pieces from a puzzle, these events have been unhinged from their coded texts. A car crash and a summer nap do not typically carry equal narrative weight. Stripped of any pre-existing hierarchy, like objects in a collection, the series questions the assignment of scope and significance to certain moments in time
over others.


These videos consciously engage with representational traditions as varied as painting, documentary film and photography. In what recalls theatrical reenactments commonly used in contemporary documentaries, an actor urinates in a cup, recreating what may have been the only moment missed by the flash bulbs of tabloid photographers. Inspired by an arbitrary notice on the internet and re-conceived in an invented location, a car crash is absorbed into a sublime Hudson River landscape. The series as a whole echoes the filmic process of montage wherein juxtapositions are presented in all of their harmony and dissonance.