Art Metropole

#03583

Rock Is Hard

Artist

Rodney Graham

Publisher

Vancouver Art Gallery

Format

Artists' Books

Details

CD

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.