Alexander Small © 1998 - 2024 all rights reserved

Run(g) Out (2) 2011

  

Run(g) Out (2) 2011 Video Projection

  

 Run(g) Out (2) 2011 Video Projection

Run(g) Out (2) is a video installation that depicts a climbing male figure, dressed in a suit and bowler hat. The figure, although apparently engaged in the act of climbing the ladder, is seen to make no progress in his ascent.  Moreover, the film is continually looped so that his climb appears interminable; he never achieves his goal or reaches his destination.

The absurd and unexpected situation evokes the iconography of the surrealist Renee Magritte, the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin, and even the bureaucratic nightmares of Franz Kafka. The title of the piece references the climbing term ‘run out’ which describes a lengthy distance between two points of protection which in some, but not all, cases might be perceived as frightening or dangerous.  Whether seeking to escape or to find ‘enlightenment’, the climber will never attain his goal, find the truth or satisfy his desire, just as he is doomed never to reach the top of the wall.