Diana Thater: Practical Effects

David Zwirner is pleased to present Practical Effects, a new large-scale video installation by pioneering video artist Diana Thater (b. 1962) at the gallery’s 519 West 19th Street location. This will be Thater’s first solo exhibition in New York since 2015 and her ninth solo presentation with the gallery.

Since emerging in the early 1990s, Thater has pioneered the use of film, video, light, and sound, continually challenging the boundaries of time-based media and installation art. Her work explores the relationship between the natural and man-made worlds while critically examining the structures of mediated reality. Following on her groundbreaking explorations of 360-degree video installations—in works such as China (1995), relay (a collaboration with T. Kelly Mason) (2007), and Chernobyl (2011)—for this presentation Thater will install a silver circus tent that will fill the entirety of the gallery, using the semi-translucent round structure as an immersive, multichannel projection screen. Approaching the idea of post-apocalyptic life through a poignant and wistful lens, Practical Effects speculates on the nature of our world in the coming years and centuries and explores the ways in which the relationships between man, machine, and animal might evolve in tandem with the physical and psychical condition of future Earth and its remaining inhabitants.

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Video: Installation view, Diana Thater: Practical Effects, David Zwirner, New York, 2022