Mathias Poledna lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. Working primarily in film, Poledna creates highly concentrated pieces that incite a tension between their visuals and their critical and cultural implications.
2018 Biennial Year Find out more
While Poledna’s minimal and evocative films focus on very different subjects – a post-punk band, a set of crystal glasses from the 1920s, a cartoon from the Golden Era of animation – they share a rigorous interest in the language of film and, more broadly, of images in our collective imagination, present and past.
Screened within a specially designed structure at the Oratory, Mathias Poledna’s new film installation further advanced his exploration of modernity’s visual imaginary. The work was set against the backdrop of early 20th-century European history, a period of traumatic modernisation and conflict. Forgoing expansive narratives, Poledna instead focused on the transient and the disjointed. The work drew from contiguous art practices, such as literature and painting, as well as from popular culture, in particular explorations of history in genre and auteur film. Working primarily in film, Poledna creates highly concentrated pieces that share a rigorous interest in the language of film and, more broadly, of images in our collective imagination, present and past.
Recent exhibitions include Galerie Buchholz, New York, USA (2017); Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, Germany (2015); The Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA (2014); 55th Venice Biennale, Italy (2013); Secession Wien, Vienna, Austria (2013); Busan Biennial, Busan, South Korea (2012); Raven Row, London, UK (2011) and Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany (2010).
Mathias Poledna at Liverpool Biennial 2018
Indifference, 2018
Video, 6:10 min
Commissioned by Liverpool Biennial
Exhibited at The Oratory