Clifton Childree
Born 1973, Birmingham, AL, United States
Clifton Childree adores the motion of black and white silent film, and the hiss and crackle of phonograph records.
Clifton Childree
Introduction
Biography
CV
Introduction
An analog artist in the digital era, Clifton Childree adores the herky-jerky motion of black and white silent film, its hokey lighting, and the hiss and crackle of phonograph records. All these rich textures are anathema in the present moment that worships hyper-smooth seamless cinematography and state of the art CGI illusions. Childree’s affection for simple hydraulics and basic mechanics comes from a deep love affair for the turn-of-the-century arcade, and the broad laughs of vaudeville entertainment. It’s the hand-cranked and slapstick that gets Childree going.
Biography
To introduce himself, Childree has said, “I was born in LA (Lower Alabama) under the sign ‘Red Light District’ during low tide in the gene pool. You may have seen me playing the washtub bass with Boise Bob and His Backyard Band. I married a dancing monkey, adopted two filthy street dogs and a mean old black cat. If you stand close enough to me, you can hear the ocean.”
Clifton Childree (Born 1971 Birmingham, Alabama, lives and works Miami, FL) is a filmmaker, performance artist, installation artist and painter. He performs as a range of characters – from a failed Henry Flagler, or a drunken candidate for county commissioner – low, profane and crude characters with hilarious and disturbing body language, loosely connected to his study of the Japanese dance style called Butoh, in addition to the body language of silent film performers like Lon Chaney, Sr., Harry Langdon, Stan Laurel. He sometimes projected his films behind him while he was performing, and his multi-media installations often acted as frames or cases for films he made. His filmic style references Jan Svankmajer, Ladislas Starewicz, the Brothers Quay, and Guy Maddin. Like them, Childree refused inhibitions, opting instead for voracious explorations of all manner of eccentricities, in the process making films that could be in turn sublime and then utterly crude. Melodrama, scatological slapstick, stop motion animation and other early film effects are all in his toolbox.
Later the installations evoked movement of objects without the use of film. Early paintings were backdrops for these multi-media installations, as in Gesamkunstwerk in Orchestrated Gestures at Emerson Dorsch Gallery in 2010. Paintings like Jubilee Bell (2018) also suggested movement, personal history, and his affinity for the visual culture of the American South. He has won numerous awards, most recently an Ellie Award from Oolite Arts in 2019. Other awards include Legal Art’s Native Seeds Emerging Artist Grant, Miami, FL; the Hilger Award for an exhibition at Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Miami New Times’s Best Local Artist; the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship; the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists (twice).
His films won numerous awards from festivals around the country, among them Best Experimental Film, indie Memphis, Memphis, TN; Best Experimental Short, Ole Muddy Film Festival, Trempealeau, WI; Best Feature, voted by Grand Jury, Downstream Film Festival, Decatur, GA; and Best Feature, Microcinefest, Baltimore, MD. He has collaborated with a number of visual artists to achieve their vision in film, including Pablo Cano and Naomi Fisher. His film made in collaboration with Pablo Cano, a commission for Young At Arts Museum in Davie, FL won the First Place Award, ASID Design Excellence Awards and Best Picks for the Field’s Finest, American Alliance of Museums.
In the visual arts, Childree’s solo shows have been comprised mostly of multi-media installations. Pivotal shows for him have been his installation “Dream Cum True” at Locust Projects in 2007, for which he transformed the entire interior of the alternative space into an immersive ghost-town arcade, where each game and ride encased films by Childree custom-made for the occasion. Childree directed and acted in the films, and he also gave a live performance for that exhibition. His show “Fuck That Chicken from Popeyes” for the Wien Museum Project Space in 2011 was accompanied by a well-illustrated catalog of the same name, featuring essays by Synne Genzmer and Gerald Matt. His installation at MANA Contemporary, presented by Galerie Ernst Hilger, marked a transition in his methodology; this was a sculptural installation which suggested movement without the inclusion of a film element.
Childree has shown widely with South Florida’s institutions, including Perez Art Museum Miami, Locust Projects, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Oolite Arts, Bas Fisher Invitational, Tigertail Productions, and NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, FL. His installation Miamah Swamp Adventure, for PULSE NY was pictured on the cover of the Arts section of The New York Times. His show Niaga-Rag Follies at Hallwalls in upstate New York was a similarly immersive installation. In addition to solo exhibitions at Hilger Brot Kunsthalle, Kunsthalle Wien and a project room at Wien Museum, he has shown with artists such as Erwin Wurm and Roni Horn in group exhibitions at Hilger Brot Kunsthalle and Kunsthalle Wien in Austria. Consisting of three discrete multi-media installations, his show Orchestrated Gestures at Emerson Dorsch Gallery in 2010 was reviewed by Paula Harper for Art in America.
CV
Born 1971 Birmingham, Alabama
Lives and works in Miami, Florida
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 Storm Inn, Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL
2018 Vote Shippy, Locust Projects, Miami, FL
2014 Farting Through Pretzels, Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna, Austria
2013 Niaga-Rag Follies, Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY
2011 Fuck That Chicken From Popeyes, Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria
2010 Orchestrated Gestures, Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL
2009 Milahmu Swamp Adventure, Pulse Art Fair installation, New York, NY
2008 It Gets Worse, Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, project space, Miami,
2007 Dream-Cum Tru, Locust Projects, Miami, FL
2006 Something Awful, Bas Fisher Invitational, Miami, FL
2005 She Sank on Shallow Bank, Bas Fisher Invitational, Miami, FL
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019
ECLECTIC, The Batz Collection, Vienna, Austria
ARTISTS DRAW THEIR STUDIOS, Art and Culture Center, Hollywood, FL
2018
Dual Roles, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL
2018
Curator, I See The Spotlight In You, Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL
Smoke and Mirrors, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
Sunrise / Sunset, Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL
2017
MemoryLab, History Miami Museum, Miami Dade College, Miami FL
Exposed, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL
2016
Aesthetics and Values, Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL
2015
Alternative Contemporaneity: TAZ, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL
Group Show, Organized by Galerie Ernst Hilger, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ
2014
Echos Myron, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Hollywood, FL
2013
Light Your Night, Miami Light Project, Miami, FL
2012
South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship Exhibition, FAU Galleries, Boca Raton, FL
The Circus as a Parallel Universe, Vienna Museum of Art, Vienna, Austria
Wedding Crashers, Deering Estate, Miami, FL
Sex, DUIs, and Videotape, Site 109, New York, NY
2011
Sight Specific, Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Blue Ribbon, opening film for Pablo Cano puppet show, Museum of Contemporary Art,
North Miami, FL
2010
Here, There and Everywhere, Brot Kunsthalle Gallery, Vienna, Austria
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