Public Art Commission
California Natural Resources Agency, Sacramento
May 2022
https://www.publicartca.dysonwomack.com/
As a collaborative, RIGER addresses the legacy of black and white landscape photography in the American West. To create Zones, the artists referenced EPA and California ecological zones, as well as the eleven step zone system for black and white photography developed by Ansel Adams. In querying the utility and historical context of these structures, Zones offers a meditation on vision and humans’ place in the natural world.
Father-daughter duo RIGER draws from 60+ years of landscape photography by Paul Riger (b. 1943) developed into video by Cassie Riger (b.1975). This is Paul Riger’s first public exhibition.
-Dyson & Womack, Public Art California
RIGER, Zones, 2022, digital video, 30 minutes. Collection of Public Art California. Installation view at California Natural Resources Agency, Sacramento.
RIGER, artists at work. November 2021
3 WAYS - THUMBS FOR ARM
This work by Cassie Riger was created for Arm Gallery/ Visitor Welcome Center in 2020. The video installation takes place first on the artist’s forearm, and then on the Arm Gallery forearm. The piece was shown at Visitor Welcome Center on November 4, 2020, as Americans waited for election results.
Shown at “No more land West,” Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles, 2020
https://www.instagram.com/visitorwelcomecenter/
Cassie Riger, 3 Ways (thumbs for arm), remote video installation on the artist’s arm, 0:24 single channel video, 2020
Cassie Riger, 3-Ways (thumbs for arm), 0:24 single channel video, 2020
Cassie Riger, 3-Ways (thumbs for arm), video installation at Arm Gallery, 0:24 single channel video, 2020
In her exhibition Automatic Vaudeville, Cassie Riger creates kinetic video installations that embody a personal interaction with technology rooted in the histories of moving images. Emerging from her lifelong fascination with media and technology, as well as her sustained interest in the intersection of spectatorship and early cinematic displays, Riger’s project offers a reflection on how we experience and relate to technology. The exhibition title, Automatic Vaudeville, references one of the first highly profitable New York city amusement arcades initially offering coin operated “peep” shows and later introducing short films screened in a theater. Citing the emergence of cinematic entertainment in the public space and the assorted technologies that accompanied it, the title further connects her work to the playful and performative aspects of early cinema. As her works reveal, similar threads of humor and spectacle still inhabit the kinds of moving images that circulate today on social media and the Internet, and thus continue to seduce and delight viewers. The exhibition underscores what I find to be an important premise: although the technology that drives the circulation of media images has changed rapidly over past centuries, how we use and interact with those imageries has remained relatively the same.
Stacey McCarroll Cutshaw, from the essay “Cassie Riger: Embodying Images,” 2019
This project was presented by Pitzer College Art Galleries in 2018, curated by Ciara Ennis with support from the California Arts Council.
Cassie Riger, Limelight (2018) (Detail view); Video sculpture (single channel video, miniature video projector, wood, paper, metal, candle lamp); 30” x 30”x 60”, 4 min 20 second video
Cassie Riger, Limelight (2018) (Detail view); Video sculpture (single channel video, miniature video projector, wood, paper, metal, candle lamp); 30” x 30”x 60”, 4 min 20 second video
Installation view of solo exhibition, Cassie Riger, Automatic Vaudeville at Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, California (September 29 - December 8, 2018) Curated by Ciara Ennis.
Left: Limelight (2018); Video sculpture (single channel video, wood, paper, metal, candle lamp); 30” x 30”x 60”, 4 min 20 second video
Right: Kinetoscope Parlor Set: Interior Design (2018); Video sculpture (single channel video with found footage, wood, paint, mirror, artificial plants, lava lamp, fire-and-ice lamp); 48” x 60”x 24”, 4 minute 45 second video
Cassie Riger, Kinetoscope Parlor Set: Interior Design (2018) (Detail view); Video sculpture (single channel video with found footage, wood, paint, mirror, artificial plants, lava lamp, fire-and-ice lamp); 48”x 60”x 24”, 4 minute 45 second video
Cassie Riger, Flicker Effect: A Demonstration of 35mm Magnetic Film (2017-18) (Motion View); Kinetic sculpture (Found record, chauvet mini strobe, Jenson 3-in-1 record player, 35mm slide casing, picture frame, clay, wire); 90” x 12” x 12”
Cassie Riger, Flicker Effect: A Demonstration of 35mm Magnetic Film (2017-18) (Still view); Kinetic sculpture (Found record, chauvet mini strobe, Jenson 3-in-1 record player, 35mm slide casing, picture frame, clay, wire); 90” x 12” x 12”
Cassie Riger, Flicker Effect: A Demonstration of 35mm Magnetic Film (2017-18); Kinetic sculpture (Found record, chauvet mini strobe, Jenson 3-in-1 record player, 35mm slide casing, picture frame, clay, wire); 90” x 12” x 12”
Cassie Riger, Praxinoscope (2018) (Still view); Kinetic sculpture (motor, wood, metal, mylar sheeting) lamp, 16mm projector; Dimensions variable, installation approximately 90” x 90” x 90”
Installation view of Cassie Riger, Automatic Vaudeville at Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2018. Foreground: Praxinoscope (2018) (Partial view, still); Kinetic sculpture (16mm projector, motor, lamp, wood, metal, mylar sheeting); Dimensions variable, installation approximately 90’x90”x90”. Background: Limelight (2018), Video sculpture (single channel video, wood, paper, metal, candle lamp; 30”x30”x60”; 4:20
Cassie Riger, Praxinoscope (2018) Kinetic sculpture (motor, wood, metal, mylar sheeting) lamp, 16mm projector; Dimensions variable, installation approximately 90” x 90” x 90”
Cassie Riger, Kinetoscope Parlor Set: Flat Screen Faceplant (2018); Video sculpture (single channel video with found footage, flat screen TV, wood, paint); 30”x 26”x 42”; 2 minute 30 second video
Installation view of Cassie Riger, Automatic Vaudeville at Pitzer College Art Galleries, 2018. Left: Flicker Effect: A Demonstration of 35mm Magnetic Film (2018), found object; 12”x 12”. Right: Praxinoscope (2018). 16mm projector, motor, lamp, wood, metal, mylar sheeting; Dimensions variable, installation approximately 90’x90”x90”
Installation view: Cassie Riger,Automatic Vaudeville at Pitzer College Art Galleries (2018)
Left: Limelight (2018); Video sculpture (single channel video, wood, paper, metal, candle lamp); 30” x 30”x 60”, 4 min 20 second video
Middle: Praxinoscope (2018) (Partial view, still); Kinetic sculpture (motor, wood, metal, mylar sheeting) lamp, 16mm projector; Dimensions variable, installation approximately 90” x 90” x 90”
Right: Flicker Effect: A Demonstration of 35mm Magnetic Film (2017-18); Kinetic sculpture (Found record, chauvet mini strobe, Jenson 3-in-1 record player, 35mm slide casing, picture frame, clay, wire); 90” x 12” x 12”
PRISMS was an artists’ curated project in collaboration with Mak Kern.
Press release and additional exhibition images here.
Catalog essay by Jennifer Frias (excerpt):
Cassie Riger’s “news” (orange) (2018), responds to the bombardment and manipulation of information via social media during the 2016 presidential election. Eighty collaged and drawn slides in orange tones wash over a spinning wheel of black silhouetted images. The orange tones reference the ugly outcome of that media manipulation, …, while the hand cut silhouettes aCatalog here.re drawn from fake news stories released by Russia over social media. As with much of Riger’s work, this piece also deals with the role of the viewer’s “fascination” in participating with and interpreting the “spectacle.”... The viewer’s engagement might also be considered in terms of the work of Jenny Holzer, where light is used as a conveyor for action or attention…. In “news” (orange), the slide projector serves the purpose of isolating the projected images as an action of proof and attention. It also lends to the aesthetic of old tabloid layouts that were once viewed through a microfilm reader— a nod to the archiving of newspapers. Sound lends an element of interrogation between light and space by way of the noisy slide carriage shifting to the next image.
Jennifer Frias, from the essay, “AXIS OF LIGHT x DARKNESS,” 2018
PRISMS was presented at FOCA, January 27 - March 23, 2018 with support from the Fellows of Contemporary Art Curators Lab Award.
Cassie Riger, news (orange)
Motor, paper, metal, plexiglass, slide projector with 80 handmade slides
114” 150” x 124” (variable to site)
2018
Cassie Riger, news (orange) installed at FOCA, Los Angeles, 2018. Background, Hiromi Takazawa.
With the performance MESHES, Cassie Riger continues her exploration of expansive and open-ended cinematic experiences.
MESHES, takes as its starting point the 1943 experimental film "Meshes of the Afternoon" by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. In Riger’s MESHES we meet Maya and Death, the chief characters of the original film, with the addition of several new players Riger calls Technikós (from the greek “related to art, artistic, skilful,” or what today would be called “techies.”) The Technikós create light and shadow through handheld special effects. They literally bring to life the experience of cinema.
Developed as a “cameraless experimental film,” the work takes “Meshes of the Afternoon” as a methodological prompt or manifesto. If Deren and Hammid’s film insists that a “psychological” film should be genuinely complex, that it must include the subjective experience of women, and that it should be made with a personal sensibility and simple effects, then MESHES experiments with enacting these ideas in real time with audience participants.
MESHES was presented at and supported by Plan-B International Art Festival, Borgarnes, Iceland, August 2017
Cassie Riger, MESHES (Performance still) 12-minute performance, presented at Plan-B International Art Festival, Borgarnes, Iceland (August 2017)
Cassie Riger, MESHES, performance, 2017
Vertical Retrace explores the aesthetics and physicality of 20th century modernity. The series is rooted in the artist’s memories of her grandfather, who designed lenses for Kodak cameras. His lengthy electrical engineering descriptions of the workings of cathode ray televisions (CRTs) inspired CRT Triptych (2015), a series of glass screens in the pixel colors of CRT technology, red, green, and blue. The playful refiguring of CRTs continues with Nam June Paik, a shrine-like tribute to the pioneering video artist.
The video installation Night of the Hunter’s Lukewarm Reception (2015) similarly pays tribute to a mid-century artistic masterpiece. The film Night of the Hunter (1955) is now renowned for its cinematography and design. However, it was a box office flop upon its release, perhaps because of its complicated experimental visual style. In this work, Riger worked with specific scenes, painting the set designs in a brushy abstract experimental style and rephotographing these as stills, which are projected large scale. At the same time, the artist hand cut miniature silhouettes of film stills, which rotate at the bottom of the installation. The installation creates multiple registers of visual imagery, much like the original film.
This project was supported in part by the Women’s Center for Creative Work. Selections from Vertical Retrace were shown in the Queer Biennial:”What if Utopia,” 2018
Cassie Riger, Night of the Hunter’s Lukewarm Reception (Extrovert), installation approximately 15' x 10' x 20' (variable to site.) Video projection, record player, paper, glass, wood, metronome, lighting gels (2015)
Cassie Riger, Night of the Hunter’s Lukewarm Reception (Extrovert), installation approximately 15' x 10' x 20' (variable to site.) Video projection, record player, paper, glass, wood, metronome, lighting gels (2015)
Cassie Riger, Night of the Hunter’s Lukewarm Reception (Extrovert), Detail view, installation approximately 15' x 10' x 20' (variable to site.) Video projection, record player, paper, glass, wood, metronome, lighting gels (2015)
Cassie Riger, Night of the Hunter’s Lukewarm Reception (Extrovert), installation approximately 15' x 10' x 20' (variable to site.) Video projection, record player, paper, glass, wood, metronome, lighting gels (2015)
Cassie Riger, Nam Jun Paik, 10" x 12" x 8.” Glass, lamps, lighting gels, blackwrap, wood, metal, paper, glue (2015)
detail. Cassie Riger, Nam Jun Paik, 10" x 12" x 8.” Glass, lamps, lighting gels, blackwrap, wood, metal, paper, glue (2015)
Cassie Riger, CRT Triptych: Raster Scan II, 10" x 12" x 8”. Glass, lamps, grease pencil, lighting gels, blackwrap, wood (2015)
Cassie Riger, CRT Triptych: Raster Scan I, 10" x 12" x 8”. Glass, lamps, grease pencil, lighting gels, blackwrap, wood (2015)
Cassie Riger, CRT Triptych: Electron Map, 10' x 12' x 8.” Glass, lamp, pen & ink, lighting gels, blackwrap, wood (2015)
In these pieces, I wanted to consider the operation of early cinema: as a series of propositions; as an uncodified but fascinating opportunity; as a physical art form, attached to and deriving from to an apparatus that engages a viewer embodied in a specific social order, place, and time; as a medium in which viewers participate actively, seeking out immersion in moments of cinematic pleasure, and then moving on. Each work explores some aspect of either a particular work of early cinema, or some aspect of the mechanism or potential of these early experiments.
Cassie Riger, from the artist talk, Early Influences: A Regression, 2013
This project was presented in 2013 at Northwestern University AIR studio, curated by John Neff, at For Your Art, Los Angeles, and at Room Gallery, University of California, Irvine (UCI). Early Influences was supported in part by grants from UCI School of the Arts.
Cassie Riger, Composition, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 6 x 8 x 3.’) Two channel video projection, wood, matboard, metal (2013)
Cassie Riger, Composition, installed at Agency Contemporary, Los Angeles, 2014
Cassie Riger, Composition, installed at Agency Contemporary, Los Angeles, 2014 Foreground, Jed Lind.
Cassie Riger, Composition, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 6 x 8 x 3.’) Two channel video projection, wood, matboard, metal (2013)
Cassie Riger, Newsreel installed at Northwestern University, Kaplan Institute A.I.R Studio, 2013
Detail. Cassie Riger, Newsreel, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 8 x 4 x 5.’) Paper, metal, plexiglass, glue, motor, wood, slide projector with 80 handmade slides (2013)
this album: selected kinetic works from the series Early Influences
Detail. Cassie Riger, Newsreel, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 8 x 4 x 5.’) Paper, metal, plexiglass, glue, motor, wood, slide projector with 80 handmade slides (2013)
Cassie Riger, Newsreel, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 8 x 4 x 5.’) Paper, metal, plexiglass, glue, motor, wood, slide projector with 80 handmade slides (2013)
Cassie Riger, Newsreel, dimensions variable (Installation approximately 8 x 4 x 5.’) Paper, metal, plexiglass, glue, motor, wood, slide projector with 80 handmade slides (2013)
Detail. Cassie Riger, Philosophy Machine, 24 x 36 x 24.” Wood, string, metal, glass, plexiglass, glue, digital video, projector (2013)
Detail. Cassie Riger, Philosophy Machine, 24 x 36 x 24.” Wood, string, metal, glass, plexiglass, glue, digital video, projector (2013)
Cassie Riger, Philosophy Machine, installed at For Your Art, 2013
Cassie Riger, Motif, installed at Room Gallery, 2013
Cassie Riger, Motif, dimensions variable. Wood, copper, aluminum, paint, digital image, projector, desk fan (2013)
These photos began with sensationalized and cruelly shocking stories of children in distress: the JonBenét Ramsey murder, baby Jessica who fell down the well, he boy in the plastic bubble, the Elián González affair. What are the affective responses to these tales, and how do we describe them? Trauma and repression: how do we account for the collective import of these personal projections, anxieties, and fears? These stories—conveyed via TV news—became prompts for my constructions.
I began by working with a medium-format camera and macro lens but soon switched to digital for its ease and more synthetic or “slick” look. I constructed miniature sets in my studio out of scraps of felt and paper, bits of twisted wire, and lots of glitter. Then I lit the whole ensemble with colored gels, as though from the most over-the-top music videos or pop clichés. The final, highly saturated prints are small—like the TV in my childhood kitchen—and printed on high-gloss paper in the 3:4 aspect ratio of analog television.
Cassie Riger, from the artist talk, Early Influences: A Regression, 2013
This project was presented in 2013 at For Your Art, Los Angeles, and at Room Gallery, University of California, Irvine (UCI), and supported in part by grants from UCI School of the Arts.
Cassie Riger, La Migra (Elián), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, On the Raft, On the Camera (Elián), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Out on the Ocean (Elián), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ”framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Sterile Chamber, Partial Object (Boy), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2012-2013)
Cassie Riger, Night Light (Boy), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Figure/Ground, Texas (Baby J), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Slippage (Baby J), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Inside the Well (Baby J), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Stuck (Baby J), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Pageant (JBR), 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Performative: What Happened in the Basement (JBR), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Parents (JBR), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2 ” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Cassie Riger, Spectacle/Death (JBR), 16 1/2” x 12 1/2” framed, edition of three. Ultrachrome pigment print on premium smooth gloss paper (2013)
Installation view, Cassie Riger, Sterile Chamber, Partial Object, Room Gallery, 2013
Installation view, Cassie Riger, Sterile Chamber, Partial Object, Room Gallery, 2013
Installation view, Cassie Riger, Sterile Chamber, Partial Object, Room Gallery, 2013
Installation view, Cassie Riger, Sterile Chamber, Partial Object, Room Gallery, 2013
