NEW YORK, NY.- Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, is presenting The Subtle Knife by Daniel Crooks for the month of January as part of the organization’s signature Midnight Moment series. Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.
On view January 1–31, 2021, The Subtle Knife is presented in partnership with Asia Society on the occasion of the inaugural Asia Society Triennial, on view at select locations in New York City from October 27, 2020 through June 27, 2021.
In The Subtle Knife, Daniel Crooks explores the relationship between transportation and the moving image, while taking the viewer on a contemplative journey through time and space. Moving slowly from train track to train track through a series of never-ending, constantly receding doorways, the viewer is given fleeting glimpses of new destinations that serve as an outlet for imagining new possibilities. Each rectangle frames a new location, and while the camera pans backwards, the edges of the video recede to become another rectangle infinitely shrinking along the tracks.
“As with much of my work, I hope the audience is transported for a moment to a place where the world is less concrete, where the models we have in our heads of what is real become slightly less fixed, where our concepts of time become much more fluid,” said Daniel Crooks.
As the first Midnight Moment of 2021, The Subtle Knife ushers in the new year by distorting space and time and underlining the feeling of transformation and transition in Times Square, one of the city’s central hubs of subway train lines. Entrancing, slow, and seemingly boundless, The Subtle Knife draws viewers into parallel worlds, challenging our perception of reality.
Daniel Crooks (B. 1973, Hastings, New Zealand) lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Crooks works predominantly in digital video, photography and installation. He is best known for his digital video and photographic works that capture and manipulate time and motion. He is a graduate of the Auckland Institute of Technology and the Victorian College of the Arts (School of Film and Television). The artist has been the subject of numerous international solo and group exhibitions at institutions including Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne (2016); Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2012); Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art (2012); and Tate Modern, London (2010). He has been the recipient of a number of awards and grants such as the Prudential Eye Award, Singapore (2013), and the Basil Sellers Art Prize, Melbourne (2008).
