Since 1982 Donald O’Finn has used TV and video imagery as found objects to repurpose, constructing what he calls "Narratives from Appropriated material". The village voice “Best Of” referred to his “feverishly edited encyclopedically strange video collages” as “ lively rivers, a liquid experience”. Stating that “his editing is so hyper-intuitive that the culture shocks and time warps gel into a state of half vertigo and half trance.“ Mr O’Finn considers his product much closer to poetry or painting, than to film or TV. His videos have enjoyed exhibitions and screenings at various cult venues, as well as the Hershhorn Museum of Art in Washington D.C., and both Lincoln Center and the Anthology Film Archive in N.Y. City, performing with the multi media audio-visual collective known as rev.99.
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“Average art viewers would be completely lost on Donald O’Finn's videos. It's a lot easier for a culture embedded in glamour to fall in love with a relatively complex cinematic experience filled with icons rather than to be seduced
by the lone single channel image of guy selling the flowbie.... O’Finn gives an image of seduction as easily as he retracts it with a cheeseburger or a fat reduction infomercial.
O'Finn, living like a post apocalyptic caveman...is like a madman watching and cheering at the collapse of the media machine. “
Madeleine Gallagher
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Donald O'Finn
freddys.backroom@verizon.net
http://www.donaldofinn.com
1957 Born S.F. Ca.
Education:
1982-1989 BFA/MFA - San Francisco Art Institute
Selected Exhibitions and screenings :
1988 Group Show Museum Of modern Art Rental Gallery S.F. Ca.
1989 Solo Show Joseph Chowning Gallery S.F. Ca.
1990 - 91 Solo & Group Show Foster Goldstrom Gallery N.Y. N.Y.
1991- 98 Annual Group Show Alan Stone Gallery N.Y. N.Y.
2003 Guns Show Parkers Box Art Gallery Brooklyn N.Y.
2004 rev.99 Anthology Film Archives, NY
2005 Screening Brooklyn Underground Film Festival, Brooklyn N.Y.
2005 rev.99 Anthology Film Archives, NY
2005 rev.99 Hershhorn Museum Performance
2005 Video Series Goliath Visual Space, Brooklyn N.Y.
2005 rev.99 Anthology Film Archives, NY
2005 rev.99 the Hirshhorn Museum Washington DC.
Contact/email_____________
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Donald O’Finn is a core member of a live audio/video performance group called "Rev-99", that tours nationally, as well as internationally.
Rev.99 <http://www.rev99.tv>
Rev.99 is a bi-coastal audio-visual collective lead by 99 Hooker. The group improvises with TV and film clips and mixes in experimental music and spoken word pieces to create "autopsies" of ideas, familiar notions, and pop-culture icons. Edgy, intelligent, funny, and often disturbing, these performances use live switchers, cameras, and video games to make each show a unique, spontaneous, interactive experience. As hardware costs plummet and software becomes more flexible, media artists can confront and respond to popular culture on its own terms and subvert the one-directional producer to consumer relationship.
rev.99 features 99 Hooker, Donald O'Finn, Kathy Coogan, Jim Pletcher, Brother Russell Scholl, and others.
Rev.99 has been featured in America's home for avant-garde cinema, Anthology Film Archive, as well as The world renowned Hershhorn Museum of Art in Washington D.C., and the famous Lincoln Center in N.Y. City.
"Sometimes scary, sometimes hilarious, and often a combination of the two."
SF Weekly
"The blurry chaos of sensory overload, is punctuated (and made riveting) by remarkable juxtapositions, unexpected motifs, and clever satire."
The New Yorker
"If Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and Sidney Bechet rose from the dead and started directing the evening news, the result would look somewhat like rev.99."
GetUnderground.com