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David Politzer
Presented on flat screen monitors and suspended televisions, Politzer’s wry videos tackle subjects as diverse as the self-help industry and cowboys as an icon of American masculinity.
Hanging Baggage is a video sculpture that features two wooden cabinet style televisions that hang from the ceiling via a series of ropes, pulleys and cables. Politzer, performs two separate characters the two screens. One is a guilt-absolving self-help expert, the other a 20-something male who is racked with guilt.
“I find the self-help industry both fascinating and repulsive,” Politzer says. “On the one hand, there’s this sort of absurd idea that if you practice some awesome affirmation from a so-called expert, you can become a changed person overnight.”
“On the other hand,” he continues, “we all look for someone to help us find answers. Self-help is like a secularized form of religion.”
Inspired by John Ford’s classic westerns and Politzer’s current hometown of Roswell, NM, the single channel video, Rio Macho, is shot on location in Monument Valley and various other iconic sights (both sophisticated and kitsch) of the Great American West. Politzer carries a TV through the entire video. On the TV is a pre-recorded cowboy version of himself who engages “the real” Politzer in conversation about the virtues of being a cowboy.
“This video reconciles my own fascination with the iconography of cowboys as a universal symbol of the true American man,” Politzer says, “with the fact that I’m an East Coast guy who’ll never be able to attain that level of manliness.”
Also included in the exhibition are several photo-collages on paper. Here too Politzer is the subject and performer, experimenting with ideas for future sculptures and performances.