artUS Issue 14

Joe Sola: Cliffhanger
by Otino Corsano

The July - September 2006 issue of artUS features my essay on the work of Los Angeles artist Joe Sola. The following is an excerpt of the artUS article:

Joe Sola documents the interior screening room of collective film memories. Akin to Steve McQueen's homage to Buster Keaton, "Deadpan" (1997), Sola's video-based performances deploy tactics of vulnerability and implied danger to draw viewers in, affording them a front-row view of themselves. Often featuring the artist in the title roles, these redux snippets of old movies transform the inner eye's Hollywood landscape into a noirish palimpsest of flashbacks and rude awakenings, those defining moments of what F. Scott Fitzgerald once called "romantic readiness."

Sola's insight into the
Dream Factory as a tangled weave of
internal projections or cuttings of the real world
also alludes to his unique brand of
"cinematic therapy," by which he means that we can all
dissect our film experiences and relationships rather than swallow them whole.

Joe Sola "Studio Visit" (performance view), 2004