Rob Ring

Rob Ring (born 1976) is a Canadian video artist working in Kitchener, Ontario. Best known for his series of self-destructive "Lesson" shorts, and several controversial video art parodies. His contemporary works are considered a mainstay of contemporary art, strongly influenced by William Wegman, Wood & Harrison, Chris Burden, Stelarc, Banksy, and Graffiti Research Lab. His lengthy marathon piece "Ultra Hustle Dance Party" has spawned a number of online imitators.
Rob was the co-founder of Niagara-based conceptual collective ARTINVERSE, who were responsible for a streak of guerrilla art events and happenings in the Niagara region from 1998 to 2003.
Ring is the Artistic Director at CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area), curating the biennial exhibition, and also organizing and curating the "I (heart) Video Art" series, a recurring event which attracts notable video artists internationally. Rob is also prominent collaborator with many performance and installation artists, providing documentation of their transitory works in the video medium.
ARTINVERSE
Rob Ring was a founding member of the Conceptual Art Collective ARTINVERSE. Members of the collective always worked under pseudonyms, and never showed their faces during performances, often sporting grim reaper style blackout masks and tailored black suits. There is great speculation about who the other members of the collective were, but Ring has publicly acknowledged his involvement in the group’s early activities. Some of the more notable works from Rob’s time with the group (1998-2003) include:
* “Fuck Gary Michael Dault” in which a 500 metre long chain of elastic bands was slowly stretched out until it reached its breaking point.
* “The Great Whitewash” in which the performers donned official looking City employee worksuits. Cans of white spraypaint in hand, they then walked through the downtown core & proceeded to paint all the muddy snowbanks white again.
Early video work
After leaving ARTINVERSE Ring maintained his performance art roots, but began to work exclusively with video. His performances no longer took place in front of an audience, and were instead performed in a bare studio & were recorded on videotape.
These early video works were a direct confrontation of the conventions of video art. Ring adapted the aesthetics of first generation video artists from the 1970s, producing videos which were shot in one unedited take, and consisted of simple actions or gestures. The work rejected, however, the format of these early videos, which tended to be very long & repetitive (often running 30 minutes to an hour). His early video works adapted the short format style of more contemporary work (generally under 10 minutes in duration), but rejected newer artists’ use of digital effects as primary content in place of performance.
Most notable from this period were the series of works titled “Lessons” which were premiered at Toronto’s V-Tape in 2003. Several of these videos were released on a limited edition DVD titled “Performance Anxiety” in 2005.
Notable works from the “Performance Anxiety” compilation include:
* “Lesson #1” - In this video the artist sits at a table in what appears to be a vacant studio space. On the table in front of him there is a 1 Litre bottle of white vinegar and a shot glass. He proceeds to drink the entire contents of the bottle of vinegar, one ounce at a time (approximately 34 oz). While this is a direct reference to some more self-destructive performance artists of the 70s, the work is also rooted in Taoist philosophy. The act of drinking vinegar references The Vinegar Tasters, a Taoist allegorical painting about Lao Tze, Confucius and Buddha, representing the three major schools of Chinese Philosophy (Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism respectively). In the painting the three philosophers are each taking a sip of vinegar from a large vat. Their reactions, and the expressions on their faces, representing the predominant attitude of their philosophies.
* “Lesson #2” - This video is typical of this era of Ring’s production in that it combines the concerns of Conceptual Art with the humour often associated more with mass media than Fine Art. In the video a plank of wood runs horizontally across the otherwise minimal image on the screen. The artist then slowly walks onto the board, visible only from the knees down, and proceeds to saw through the board between his legs. After approximately 4 minutes he succeeds in his task & falls out of frame with only the sounds of banging wood & grunts of pain suggesting the artist’s fate.
* "Lesson #7" - In this video the artist sits at a table, inhales deeply & starts to inflate a balloon. He inhales the air back out of the balloon, then proceeds to attempt to re-inflate it again. This repeats, and the artist recycles his own breath from the balloon for several minutes before collapsing on the table panting for oxygen.
* “Ultra Hustle Dance Party” - Technically not a part of the “Performance Anxiety” compilation, Ultra Hustle Dance Party was released on DVD simultaneously and is generally considered to be its companion piece. The video consists of a 60 minute looped version of the Van McCoy song The Hustle. For the duration of the track the artist dances, often addressing the camera directly, until, 60 minutes later, the music fades out. This video is uncharacteristic of Ring’s early work because of its length (most videos from “Performance Anxiety” were under 5 minutes) but maintains his engagement with early Performance Art. In this case he is parodying the tradition of endurance art by repeating an absurd gesture for an extended period of time.
Later works
In 2006 Rob Ring briefly experimented with Music as an artistic medium, recording “Old School Preschool” in which he combined classic hip-hop beats with nursery rhymes.
The video work Ring has produced since “Ultra Hustle Dance Party” has not been in the Performance tradition which first gained him notoriety. His practice today involves mostly computer-generated visuals, and is often done in cooperation with Symphonic and Theatre performances.
He has created video to accompany live performances of music by Osvaldo Golijov, Pink Floyd, and has incorporated original video into theatrical productions by The MT Space and Inter Arts Matrix.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu