Kevin Frech
COMMUNE, 2019
HD video, 3:26
On loan from the Artist
On view in the E. Craig Wall, Jr. Academic Center from January 10th – February 20th, 2021. You may view an excerpt of the video on Kevin’s website.
Please note: All buildings on campus, including the Wall Center, are only open to Davidson students, faculty, and staff due to the pandemic.
Q&A with the Artist and Gallery Intern Cole Thornton ’21:
Cole: As I was watching this video I noticed the notification sounds for emails and texts coming from my computer and phone with a new focus. Did you intend for viewers to have a meta experience when viewing this work with their own relationship to their phones? [Sound is disabled in the Wall Center, but you may watch an excerpt of the video with sound on Kevin’s website.]
Has your relationship to this work, with its themes of connectivity/disconnectivity and experiencing the world through our devices, changed in the era of COVID?
Kevin’s video response:
Artist Statement: Commune: (1) to communicate intensely. (2) The smallest community unit in many European countries.
In COMMUNE, a grid of nine people communicates with the viewer non-verbally while interacting with others via their smartphones. They are at once together yet separate, intense but removed, expressive yet occluded, connected to us and to the unseen people they interact with, yet also separated by the same technologies (video and smartphones) that facilitate this communication. Their arrangement and body language, as their collective gaze focuses downward to the texts they read while also projecting their thoughts into the ether, is reminiscent of a church choir with their hymnals.
My work examines the contradictions of contemporary society, where the rise of technology offers the promise of ease, luxury, and connection, yet it often complicates our lives, wastes resources, and alienates us from each other. I also think a lot about currency. Not merely in the sense of “money,” but also in the larger sense of exchange and acceptance. What do we as people value today? And how do we assign those values?
The work centers on the human experience. Even when discussing topics such as global warming or the extinction of animal species, the questions are framed by how humans perceive these catastrophes, and whether we can be made to sufficiently care. I’d like to believe that we can.
© Copyright K. Frech
Kevin Frech received his BFA while studying at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and continued on to receive a Masters in Filmmaking from the Tisch School of Fine Arts, at New York University. Frech’s work explores contradictions existent in our contemporary society and attempts to make his viewers care about the issues proposed through his art. Frech’s work will often include visual tropes from contemporary culture to aid in a visual stimulation typically captured through time lapse videography. His work has been included in exhibitions and shows at the Barrett Art Center, New York, Arte Laguna, Italy, Storefront Media Gallery, Seattle, and now Davidson College.