QCA Film: Ryan Trecartin

You’re in a bedroom-slash-pubescent prison-slash-goth art space-slash-rehab gone wrong-slash-interior-slash-exterior of a real-slash-fake home where everybody, your best friend, and worst mother are all “Whatever 2000” speeded-up, reversed, replayed, and zoomed-in with hypercolor face makeup, non-stop jerky handcam, desktop digital effects editing, stylishly insubstantial banter, and mockery about caring about caring.
Texas-born Ryan Trecartin, the 26-year-old wunderkind who was the youngest artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, is the director of I-Be Area, a slippery, almost non-narrative, 100-minute feature-length film in which Trecartin’s friends portray the clones, poseurs, avatars and wanna-bes of contemporary Internet culture. Trecartin veers between surrealism and science fiction, between comedy and horror, between Mamet-style conversation in which characters talk more to themselves than anyone else and everything is said and done completely for appearance. Call it “weird,” call it “nonsense,” call it “pastiche” or “self-indulgent”… but the one thing you can’t call it is boring or unimportant — you’ve honestly never seen anything quite like it.
Read more about Trecartin’s creation of I-Be Area, see more of his film and sculpture, and get links to reactions to his work after the jump!

Trecartin plays some of the roles in I-Be Area including Pasta, a he-she sweetheart with a Dutch-boy haircut. He created all the sets and costumes as well, giving the film the look of an amateur theater production — but in a good way — he also wrote the script and packed it with witty allusions, taking shots at the art world, Internet chatrooms, cell-phone filmmakers and self-designated blog stars.
Time Out New York writer, Barbara Pollack said, “With his multitude of talents, Trecartin is poised to become the next Matthew Barney, the perfect artist for an era when iPhones, MySpace and Project Runway dominate contemporary aesthetics.”
See all of I-Be Areaat Ryan Trecartin’s YouTube account.
See more of Trecartin’s film stills and sculptures.
Also read an article about the advent of video art and I-BE AREA’s place in it.