50,000 beds
This ambitious project,
the brainchild of artist Chris Doyle, marks the first collaboration between
Connecticut’s premier contemporary art exhibition spaces: The Aldrich
Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Artspace in New Haven, and Real Art
Ways in Hartford.
Doyle has commissioned forty-five different artists to make short videos, each
set in a different hotel, motel, or inn across Connecticut. The exhibition
focuses on the hotel room as a site filled with narrative potential. Familiar
yet foreign, a hotel room combines experiences of both intimacy and anonymity.
The short videos will show a diverse range of artistic responses and themes—from
fiction to documentary to a consideration of the relationship between travelers
who stay in hotels and the laborers who work in them.
The videos will be shown in specially-designed “multi-screen” galleries
at each of the three venues. In order to fully appreciate the project and
see all forty-five videos, viewers will be encouraged to visit each venue
during the summer.
