Bobby Abate

 Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. It is afternoon in a Brooklyn neighborhood of industrial buildings. Rebecca has a way with words just as words have a way of seeking her out. The crystal ball intensifies this. The A train rumbles over the Manhattan Bridge. Rebecca gazes into the crystal ball. Nighttime in a suburban neighborhood of burnt out buildings. Words have a way with Rebecca just as Rebecca has a way of seeking them out. The crystal ball intensifies this. Shot using analog video equipment from the early Seventies, Gossip is the second in a series of works stepping into the mystic beyond which encircles us on every side.

Prophecies of doom, disaster and political catastrophe envisioned by some of the world’s most famous psychics between the 1960’s the year 2001 are conjured up through 3D-animation, industrial films, text and historical footage — the sum of which combine to form a visually stunning meditation on the forces that guide us into a dark, paranoid and uncertain future. 

Caldwell's pulp storytelling, proto-feminist stance and unabashed social dramatization of his characters are a distinct vision of the condition of women -- specifically working class women. His broadly drawn themes of small town hypocrisy and restrictive moral values contextualize the titular characters' struggle for sexual expression, stability and independence. Certain Women is a disconcerting parable that pays tribute to but also defies the 50s period style of Caldwell, opting for contemporary small town situations and cinematic style. This cautionary tale of four heroic yet ordinary women is fashioned out of the past but relies on observations of the present historical moment and its political reality.

The set of Bewitched is a spiritual battleground of overlapping zones — human, alien and cyborg — in Bobby Abate's latest ontological mystery film.

SECRETS AND LIES become an aggressive virus when injected into the binary code of several video clips -- degrading them into a visual corpse.

A solid state cyborg tale on the set of a 1960's evening newscast. A mysterious unearthly being has claimed a test subject and is making use of the station's control room in attempt to communicate and perhaps reunite with its counterpart. Zenith is a celestial space, high above the clouds, where lonely frequencies and frantic spirographs pulse the dimension that separates the real from the rendered, the now from nostalgia–and ultimately divides these two beings (alter egos or lovers?)

In 1993-1994, when I was in art school, I felt like an outsider amongst outsiders.  I was queer, but there were so few out queer people around me.  I felt like I had no identity, so I started to obsessively do a numbered series of self portrait sketches in black pen to explore different personalities and aspects of myself.  They range from fantastical to completely absurd.  At some point, I started to dress up at these characters film myself using my family's old Sears VHS camera that I rescued from the garbage.

Abate’s 16mm films The Tanti Man, The Zero Order and Chisholm invoke Kenneth Anger-esque horny montage fantasies of personal psychodrama and popular culture syncopated to nostalgic tunes.