50,000 Beds
July 20 to September 23, 2007

Pawel Wojtasik and Terry Berkowitz,
Three Chimneys (video still), 2006

Question: What happens when you turn forty-five video artists loose in forty-five hotel rooms across the State of Connecticut? Answer: the exhibition 50,000 Beds.

On three consecutive nights in July, at three different art venues, the video installation 50,000 Beds will open. 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. The three organizations selected Doyle’s proposal for 50,000 Beds because its scope, themes, and compelling subject matter reflect the combined mission of the three venues—to exhibit the best in contemporary art.

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. Artspace will host the first opening on Friday, July 20, from 6 to 8 pm (on view through September 15); Real Art Ways will debut its selection of videos on Saturday, July 21, from 6 to 8 pm (on view through September 23), and The Aldrich’s installation will open on Sunday, July 22, from 3 to 5 pm (on view through September 2). Artist Chris Doyle will be at all three receptions and available for interviews.

The project is being supported by a Strategic Initiative Grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, National Endowment for the Arts, LEF Foundation, and the Furthermore program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund. 50,000 Beds has also been made possible by the generous donation of rooms by the participating hotels, motels, and inns across the state.

Multidisciplinary artist Chris Doyle’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Queens Museum of Art, and P.S.1.

Participating artists include Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Amy Barrett, David Borawski, Luca Buvoli, Roz Chast, Tyler Coburn, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Jorge Colombo, Moyra Davey and Jason Simon, David Ellis, Melissa Friedling, Neil Goldberg, Gene Gort, Jackie Goss, Brent Green, Oliver Herring, Marisa Jahn and Benj Gerdes, Nina Katchadourian, Aaron Katz, Braden King, Simon Lee and Jim White, Joshua Marston, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Paul McGuirk, Megan Michalak, Laurel Nakadate, The Neistat Brothers, Adam Niklewicz, Shannon Plumb, J Morgan Puett, Tim Rutili, Dread Scott, Gil Scullion, Greg Surman, Eve Sussman, Jacqueline Tarry and Brad McCallum, Ela Troyano, Erika Van Natta, Judi Werthein, Chris Wilcha, Pawel Wojtasik and Terry Berkowitz, Amy Yoes, Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, and Marina Zurkow.

For more information about the project please visit www.50000beds.net.

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