October 1 — 31, 2005 / Andrew Bucksbarg & Julie Adler, “Chair”
The eighth video in the Performing Video series.

Set in a deteriorating office building in downtown Los Angeles, “Chair” initially presents only footage of the decaying interior office space: there are glimpses of computer monitors still showing screensavers, closing elevator doors, fluorescent lights flickering, and a mysterious vapour. Suddenly, a woman in a highly unusual ‘wheelchair’ scuttles past the end of a hallway. The chair is on its back, with small wheels lifting it off the ground. The woman straddles the chair like a human crab, pushing with her arms against the floor to propel the chair forwards, wandering through the abandoned office building.

[Download Exhibition Publication, .PDF format] or [read HTML excerpt]

In 312 Online:
David Poolman, “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me”.

“David Poolman’s video works flow from the familiar, often dreary, spaces of the everyday. Working with such mundane set pieces as the bare apartment, the blank space of an unadorned kitchen or the automobile
rolling along a lost highway or back country road, he creates dark, sometimes sinister yet subtly humorous, narratives. Poolman’s stories are simple, consciously reminiscent of Buster Keaton’s “A Little Bit of Nothing” theory of humour, and draw on the codes of B
movies, TV sitcoms and country music. It is in country music in particular that Poolman so consistently finds his soundtrack, narrative tone and basic plots.

The Last Word in Lonesome is Me emphasizes the vaguely defined presence of individuals on the fringes who rarely participate, are often forgotten, souls lost in their own worlds.” - Andrew Hunter

David Poolman is an MFA graduate from the University of Windsor, and a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Working in video, print media and installation, he has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Recent international exhibitions include shows at Ziehersmith Gallery (New York), Sushi Performance and Visual Art (San Diego, CA), MONA (Detroit, MI), Prenelle Gallery (London, UK), and RED (Sofia, Bulgaria). David Poolman is an Assistant Professor of Art at Drake University in Des Moines, IA and co-director/founder of SPARK VIDEO CANADA, a monthly international video series in London, Ontario.