50,000 Beds Countdown: Two Weeks Left For Hotel Room Video Exhibit

August 21, 2007 at 3:29 PM | by barbarab | 0 Comments

Last weekend, while we were taking in the exhibit 50,000 Beds at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, we heard a fitting variation on the line, "I'd rather be in Philadelphia." As we watched one of the exhibit's videos, all shot in rooms in Connecticut hotels and B&B's, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to resonate, a fellow museum-goer uttered, "I don't understand any of this. I'd rather be at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, looking at the Rembrandts."

We're not sure we would go that far. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, yes. Rembrandt, not so sure. But the point is well taken. This exhibit is, in a word, unsettling. The brainchild of multimedia artist Chris Doyle, the three-venue exhibit consists of 45 videos shot in 45 different hotel rooms. Artspace in New Haven and Real Art Ways in Hartford also have video installations.

The 50,000 figure references the estimated number of lodging beds in Connecticut. The project was funded in part by the state tourism commission, with the idea of enticing people to visit the Nutmeg State.

Some of the videos at The Aldrich, like Judi Wertheim's Life Should Be a Dream, started off great: a stream of shots of the same woman wearing a white bathrobe and sitting, barefoot, on a bed in different hotel rooms reading the same book. The effect, especially the bedside symmetry, was borderline soothing. Then in the last room, she puts down the book and she has no eyes.

Not all of the videos were so macabre. Karina Aguilera Svirksy's Giaconda, seven-plus minutes of digital stills that tracked a hotel maid, was neat in an updated Frederick Wiseman kind of way. Several videos were outright witty, particularly David Ellis' Bob Floss. Floss is a serial hotel painting vandal character created by the artist.

In the video, "Floss" removes a painting, an archetypal clich� pond-scape, from the wall, slices the painting from the frame and paints up an odyssey of images (city, forest, tractor, bull, hands, fish, plane) before he returns the vandalized painting to the hotel room wall. The result is transporting and evocative.

As we watched the videos, we made notes on which rooms we'd want to stay in and which ones we'd skip. (We know that wasn't the point.) In the end, we'd take a pass on most of them. Of the videos we watched at the Aldrich, the most inviting room was in Bob Floss. Soft blue walls, understated elegance.

We were hoping we might get to one of the other two venues. Maybe next time, if there is one. Doyle says he may expand this concept. The exhibit runs through September 3.

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