Gas Men by Chris Cozier

Chris Cozier, Gas Men, film still, 2014, HD video, Image (c) Chris Cozier

Monique Meloche and Allison Glenn, Director of Monique Meloche Gallery, invite you to join us for a road trip to Miller Beach, Indiana! Just a 45 minute drive or 1 hour train ride on the South Shore Line, you will find yourself in historic Miller Beach where we will debut Trinidadian artist Christopher Cozier’s newest single-channel video Gas Men made on the shores of Lake Michigan during his 2014 residency at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University.
Derived from a recent series of drawings called The Arrest, this video, tentatively titled Gasmen or Globe, (Globe being a popular cinema in Port of Spain), Christopher Cozier’s latest video installation investigates the ongoing environmental and sociopolitical challenges presented by commercial expansion and political opportunism. Through his drawings, prints, sound art, and video work, Cozier explores the dubious space of multinational companies and their role in global politics. Gas Men was filmed on Lake Michigan, a site that in recent years has witnessed repeated crude oil spills, care of British Petroleum’s Whiting, Indiana plant. Thematically intrigued by the role of geography, Cozier created Gas Men to interrogate the specifics of site and movement of bodies. The beach in the scene could be Venezuela, Mexico, Trinidad, or Lake Michigan. Adopting a methodology akin to the aforementioned multinationals, Cozier situates his practice in many different locales; creating site-specific work while identifying gestures and elucidating concerns that are part of the larger Diaspora. The film was produced in collaboration with colleagues in the administrative offices at Northwestern University, where Cozier was in residence at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities. The sound was recorded at Alice Yard, a non-profit, contemporary art space located in Port of Spain, Trinidad, with London based musician Caroline Mair-Toby, and Trinidadian sitarist Sharda Patasar.
Christopher Cozier is an artist and writer living and working in Trinidad. A 2013 Prince Claus Award Laureate, he has participated in a number of exhibitions focused upon contemporary art in the Caribbean and internationally. Cozier is a SITE Sante Fe – Satellite Curatorial Advisor for 2014. He has been an editorial advisor to BOMB magazine for their Americas Issues (Winter, 2003, 2004 & 2005) and was part of the editorial collective of Small Axe, A Caribbean Journal of Criticism (1998 – 2010). Additionally, Cozier was a co-curator of the exhibitions Paramaribo Span in 2010 and « Wrestling with the Image » in 2011. Since 2006, he has been one of the founders and administrators of Alice Yard, an experimental space and project in Port of Spain. Cozier’s residencies include Dartmouth College and The Substation in Johannesburg. His work has been exhibited in the 1994 and 2000 Havana Biennials; Trienial Poli/Grafica de San Juan: America Latina y el Caribe (2009); Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic, TATE Liverpool (2010), The Global Africa Project, Museum of Art and Design, New York (2010-11) and Being and Island (Inseldasein), DAAD, Berlin (2013). His most recent one-person exhibition, in Development, was shown at David Krut Projects, New York in 2013.

moniquemeloche at Marshall J. Gardner Center for the Arts
540 S. Lake Street
Gary, IN 46403
Christopher Cozier: Gas Men
Opening Reception: Friday, August 8, 6-9PM
Artist Talk: Sunday, August 10, 2PM
Gallery Hours: Saturday, August 9, 6-9PM and Sunday, August 10, 2-4PM

Exhibition Partners:

Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Northwestern University’s Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, co-sponsored by the Department of Art History, the Department of Communication Studies, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, and the Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program at Northwestern University, Evanston; Miller Beach Arts and Creative District. Special thanks to Evan Boris, Tom Burke, and Ann E. Rose.