Tony Conrad
Loose Connection

Directed by Tony Conrad
US, 1972-2011
video transferred to digital, color, 54 min.
courtesy Estate of Tony Conrad and Greene Naftali, New York

The presentation of Loose Connection (1972/2011) by Tony Conrad in the Black Box—a space informed by the format and conceptual premises of the gallery’s New York venue—symbolically brings to a close its current phase of activity in New York. The screening of this iconic work by the American artist functions as a gesture of transition and transformation, redefining the role of the New York space while marking the beginning of a new operational framework for the gallery.

Loose Connection is an experimental film in which the artist records an ordinary walk with his family through the streets of New York. This apparent everydayness becomes the material for a radical formal gesture: the use of a self-constructed rotating camera. The mechanism continuously shifts the direction of recording, leading to visual destabilization and the disruption of linear continuity. The film unsettles the viewer’s habitual orientation within the image. In place of classical documentary narration emerges a dynamic, unpredictable modulation of the frame that disrupts the illusion of realism. The image undergoes fragmentation, and the viewer’s perception is compelled into constant reconfiguration.

Within Conrad’s practice—most often associated with sound minimalism and audiovisual experimentation—Loose Connection functions as a significant laboratory of perception. The artist treats film as a device that reveals its own materiality and processual nature. The work situates itself within the tradition of structural film, while at moments exceeding its conventions. Form here becomes equivalent to content—it generates meaning by disturbing the smooth flow of viewing and opening a field for analyzing how the medium organizes the experience of time and space.

Tony Conrad (March 7, 1940 – April 9, 2016) was a pioneer of the American experimental film scene. While embracing diverse fields, his work frequently offers a critical and humorous response to all normative aspects of culture. Conrad’s practice takes the form of diverse interventions in widely differing cultural spheres: music, cinema, video, arts, teaching, and social activism. His work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; Tate Modern, London; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include Culturgest, Lisbon (2022); MAMCO, Geneva (2021); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2019); MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge (2018); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo and University of Buffalo Art Gallery (2018).