Courtesy the artist and Wallspace, New York

Ron Amstutz, "Right Roads and Wrong Ways: Rod #2 (2)" (2008). C-print, 28 5⁄8 x 36 9⁄16 in.

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A motley suit and skullcap of multicolored panels makes Ron Amstutz resemble a Constructivist jester in Right Roads and Wrong Ways, the eponymous video in his New York debut. In sets painted illusionistically to look like op art canvases, stationary cameras filming askew capture the artist as he performs a series of pointless, repetitive actions on worryingly sloping floors. In one sequence, he grimaces while wrestling a curious doubleseated chair in which his head seems to have become stuck. in another, he attempts, unsuccessfully, to crawl around a partition wall on four impractical two-legged crutches. Yet another finds him running up and down sets of steep, tapering stairs, constructed so that the top is far too narrow for him to keep his footing, as if in a kind of forced perspective. falling off over and over again, he seems to actually hurt himself. All the while, quick edits change the rooms’ color schemes without interrupting the flow of events. and shifting configurations of vinyl panels intercut with black-and-white sequences determine the ungainly poses assumed by the artist.

Expending copious effort in construction and repainting, not to mention the filmed acts themselves, Amstutz harks back to the strenuous, task-based performances and videos of the 1970s, like those of his former teachers Paul McCarthy and Chris Burden. The artist may intend his struggles in this funhouse world as existential allegory, but Right Roads and Wrong Ways is more likely to evoke an everyman trapped in a Vasarely, or a character from Tron having a very bad day. "Ron Amstutz" originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' November 2008 Table of Contents.