Flumen Orationis (from The Principalities)
Flumen Orationis (from The Principalities)
Terry Adkins
2012
JANUARY 9 – FEBRUARY 10, 2023
MAIN GALLERY (UNDERNEATH THE MEZZANINE)
video: 41:35
courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York
© 2022 The Estate of Terry Adkins / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Artist Terry Adkins’ video Flumen Orationis is composed of historical stereographic images of dirigibles and balloons, with the audio of both Martin Luther King’s 1967 anti-Vietnam war speech “Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” and seminal rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s 1970 Machine Gun. The pulsating video images provide a staccato visual rhythm, interwoven with the overlapping courses of Hendrix’s and King‘s incantations; indeed, the work’s title is Latin for the flow of oratory or prayer. Many of Adkins’ other works are objects, assemblages and installations, often evoking sound and its makers, while paying particular homage to Black musicians and performers. The combinatory video Flumen Orationis appears at first to be an uncanny trilogy – of King’s grave cadences, Hendrix’s blues-grounded, virtuosic lamentations, and the phantasmagoric images – which coalesces to singular and revelatory effect. But from deeper within Terry Adkins work, complex doublings and reflections emerge through our full experience of the video.
EVENTS
Gallery Conversation & Reception
Tuesday, January 17, 5–7 PM
Join us the day after the MLK Holiday for a panel conversation and reception in honor of Terry Adkins’ video work, Flumen Ormantis (The Principalities) v.01.
Panelists Paul Bright (WFU), Prof. David Aarons (UNCG), and Prof. Reagan Patrick Mitchell (UNCSA) will discuss their own artistic and historical research as it relates to Terry Adkins’ featured work.