8768/1233800013-ian_annemathern_comestai-500.jpg

Anne Mathern, Come Stai

For months I've been failing to find a way to review Thermostat, the show of 19 videos on a 90-minute loop that's been playing at Seattle Art Museum (and which will continue through February 12). There are 19 different videos, and those 19 videos are by 17 different artists, and those artists have all at one point lived in the Pacific Northwest but their connection to it might be really pretty minor or pretty meaningless, one to the next. What to do with a big mess like that?

Except that I kept going back to the show, repeatedly, because the work in it is really good. It's not about Northwest video, or anything so vague. It's about music and landscape. Here's more. (And here's a segment of Ron Tran's band video The Peckers.)

cf78/1233800774-trojan_moon_small_blowup.jpg

Vanessa Renwick, Portrait #2: Trojan