Sprocket Holes in the Temple, Tacita Dean’s FILM Makes Its U.S. Debut
The 11-minute 35mm work, first made for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, rises 31 feet inside the Marciano’s Masonic temple.
Inside a 1961 Scottish Rite Masonic Temple on Wilshire, a strip of film is standing up. Tacita Dean’s FILM, first commissioned in 2011 for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, is on view at the Marciano Art Foundation through February 27, the first time the work has been shown in the United States.
It is an 11-minute silent 35mm film, projected vertically with its sprocket holes visible onto a 31-foot monolith in the main gallery. To get that tall format, Dean turned an anamorphic lens 90 degrees and leaned on revived silent-era techniques, including glass matte painting, gate masking and in-camera superimposition.
Dean was born in Canterbury in 1965 and lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. She was Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute in 2014 and 2015, and the Academy Museum screened her film The Uncles on September 18, the day the show opened.
The building is part of the experience. The temple, designed by Millard Sheets, still holds its Masonic library, preserved as The Relic Room, and Pierre Leguillon’s Ads & Brands runs alongside FILM on the same dates.
Admission is free, though timed-entry reservations are required.
