BERLIN.- VW (VENEKLASEN/WERNER) announced the first full-scope solo exhibition of William E. Jones in Europe, entitled “Discrepancies”.

Based in Los Angeles, Jones has distinguished himself as a filmmaker, and in recent years devoted his practice to making videos, prints, and photographs. The highlight of this exhibition is the inclusion of the first complete showing of Discrepancy, 2008-09, the largest and most complex work in the artist’s oeuvre to date.

Six videos from the artist’s ongoing series Discrepancy, 2008-09 are the focus of the exhibition. They are synchronized and share a common soundtrack based upon Isidore Isou’s radical manifesto of discrepant cinema. Written in 1951, the manifesto predicts the current state of commercial films and its author denounces, “movies from which one emerges as stupid as one entered.” The footage selected by Jones, much of it recorded by the United States Army from its Cold War enemies, relates to the manifesto’s suggestion that in order for the cinema to be renewed, it must first be destroyed.

“Discrepancies” will include many new works, such as Coup d’état, 2009, a video projection that uses a piece of found footage taken from an educational film that the artist animated by rapidly alternating each frame. The film’s director originally aimed to represent the European Revolutions of 1848 with a panning shot between a statue of a royal figure and a chandelier. Jones explodes this short sequence and transforms it into a multicoloured, stroboscopic video projection.

The exhibition also features the artist’s suite of prints entitled Stéphane Mallarmé’s «Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard» Automatically Illustrated, 2009 and Public Address, 2009, a print featuring a wide array of historical images of people in front of microphones. A recent video installation entitled Youngstown / Steel Town, 2008 and the video piece A True Cross Section, 2008, will also be shown.

William E. Jones (b. 1962, Canton, OH/USA) has exhibited in numerous international museums including MoMA New York, Tate Modern London, Le Louvre Paris, Kunsthalle Wien and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art. His films were shown at the International Film Festival in Vienna, the Sundance Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Française. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.

On 15 January 2010 at 4pm, the artist will give an introductory talk in the gallery on his work.