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Shop > Artists' Books

Out of Stock
#03568

Rock is Hard - Graham, Rodney..

Artist
Rodney Graham
Date
1996
Publisher
Optica
Format
Artists' Books
ISBN
0-9680629
Size
20 × 20 × 0.5 cm
Length
Description

A handsome man sits at a café table in Paris. Off-screen a pair of twins (one dressed in city clothes, the other in country attire) begin an intellectual debate with the simple statement: “Rock must be hard – or it will not be at all”. Lowering his periodical, the handsome onlooker alertly listens to their transgressive argument. Before him the cinnamon scented courtyard contains a guitar slinger’s chocolate mare, a US postal wagon, some very peculiar Oak trees and cast of players including a pajama clad gentleman asleep on bench, an absorbed backwards cyclist, a slightly haggard cast-away rumrunner, and a hand tied prisoner with an upright piano. With a certain Fellini precision the camera cranes away to an overhead vantage as the ‘Rock is Hard’ debate dissolves into a dreamy din of fuzz guitar. The café denizen exits left of frame, taking with him his black fedora and bamboo fishing pole, only to immediately loop in from the right. A fascinating scene? Indeed, Vancouver’s nimble conceptualist Rodney Graham has finally delivered the soundtrack to his complex universe – if only all rock stars could be so arty. Recommended Baby.