Bruce Charlesworth (born 1950) is an American artist, known primarily for his photographic, video and multimedia works.

Early life and education

Charlesworth was born in 1950 in

Davenport, Iowa Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a ...

. He received his BA degree in Art from the

University of Northern Iowa The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) is a public university in Cedar Falls, Iowa. UNI offers more than 90 majors across the colleges of Business Administration, Education, Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences and grad ...

(1972) and his MFA degree in Painting from the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

in 1975.

Work

Charlesworth began to exhibit in New York and internationally with the photo-novellas ''Eddie Glove'' (1976–79), and ''Special Communiqués'' (1981). Other staged photographic series followed, including ''Trouble'' (1982–83), ''Fate'' (1984–87), ''Man and Nature'' (1988–91), ''Confiscated Objects'' (1999–2000), and ''Serum'' (2003–08). ''Surveillance'' (1981) was the first of many of what Charlesworth termed ''narrative environments'', works that use video and/or audio to power a narrative within a designed space. ''Projectile'' (1982), ''Wrong Adventures'' (1984), ''Private House'' (1987), ''Reality Street'' (1994) and ''Airlock'' (2004) are a few subsequent multimedia installations. Video and film works include ''Communiqués for Tape'' (1981), ''Robert and Roger'' (1985), ''Dateline for Danger'' (1987), ''A Stranger's Index'' (1990) and ''The Happiness Effect'' (2004). Throughout much of the 1990s Charlesworth worked on his feature-length experimental film project ''Private Enemy - Public Eye''. In the book entitled, ''Private Enemy, Public Eye: The Work of Bruce Charlesworth'' (1989), was also the name of a survey exhibition of his work at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

. The interactive video installation ''Love Disorder'' was featured in the ''Zero1 Biennial'' (2008) in San Jose, California and in the '' Madison Museum of Contemporary Art's Wisconsin Triennial'' (2010). ''Love Disorder'' featured a 12 foot tall screen with an uncomfortably close view of a face, and sensors in the room would change how the face reacts to the viewers movements.

Exhibitions and collections

Charlesworth's work has been shown at the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

in Paris, London's

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

The American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...

, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, the

National Museum of American Art The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

in Washington, and the

Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to: Africa * Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi Asia East Asia * Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...

in Chicago and many other museums and galleries. His work is included in the permanent collections of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, t ...

in Minneapolis, and the

Houston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...

, among others.

Awards and honors

In 2007, he was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

for his work in interactive video installation. Charlesworth was the first artist-in-residence at the

Capp Street Project Capp Street Project is an artist residency program that was originally located at 65 Capp Street in San Francisco, California. CSP was established as a program to nurture experimental art making in 1983 with the first visual arts residency in the ...

in San Francisco in 1984.

References

Sources

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Charlesworth, Bruce 1950 births American filmmakers American installation artists American multimedia artists American performance artists American photographers American video artists Living people University of Iowa alumni University of Northern Iowa alumni