Jon Routson (born 1969 in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

) is an American artist working in

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

, new media, and conceptual art. He is based in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the List of United States ...

Education

Routson attended

Albert Einstein High School Albert Einstein High School (AEHS) is a four-year public high school in Kensington, Maryland, United States. It first opened in 1962 and is named after the German-born physicist Albert Einstein. It is part of the Montgomery County Public School ...

Kensington, Maryland Kensington is a town in Montgomery County, Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. The population was 2,122 at the 2020 United States census. Greater Kensington encompasses the entire 20895 ZIP Code, ZIP code, with a population of 1 ...

. After briefly attending the

Maryland Institute College of Art The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, it is regarded as one of ...

, he received a bachelor's degree from

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD i ...

in 1993. Routson went on to earn his MFA from the

University of Maryland Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Catonsville, Maryland named after Baltimore County. It had a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs ...

in 2003. In between his degrees, Routson worked as an artist assistant under painter

Marilyn Minter Marilyn Minter (born 1948) is an American visual artist who is perhaps best known for her sensual paintings and photographs done in the photorealism style that blurs the line between commercial and fine art. Minter currently teaches in the MFA ...

and video artist

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an American performance art, performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performan ...

in New York.

Career

Routson briefly taught at the

Corcoran College of Art and Design The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design (known as the Corcoran School or CSAD) is the professional art school of the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.Peggy McGloneUniversity names first director of Corcoran School of the Arts an ...

Work

Routson is primarily known for his video work, particularly his use of

bootleg recording A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Making and distributing such recordings is known as ''bootlegging''. Recordings may be copied and traded ...

. Between 1999 and 2004, Routson made numerous recordings of contemporaneous

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

films using a handheld video camera inside a movie theater. Routson would balance the camera somewhere on his person and intentionally not look through the viewfinder. The videos often ended up largely obscuring the movie screen, either by angle or silhouette. For instance, Routson's recording of ''

The Passion of the Christ ''The Passion of the Christ'' is a 2004 American epic biblical drama film co-produced and directed by Mel Gibson from a screenplay he wrote with Benedict Fitzgerald. It stars Jim Caviezel as Jesus of Nazareth, Maia Morgenstern as the Bl ...

'' blocked the movie's subtitles behind the back of a theatre seat.de Valck, Marijke, and Hagener, Malte, eds. Cinephilia : Movies, Love and Memory. Amsterdam, NLD: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 28 April 2015. While such recordings, known as camrips, are commonly uploaded on peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Routson's works were projected on the wall of art galleries. Routson showed numerous bootlegs in two shows at the

Team Gallery Team Gallery was a contemporary art gallery located in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, with an additional project space in Venice, Los Angeles, California. It was founded by José Freire and Lisa Ruyter in 1996. Team represented such a ...

in New York City in 2003 and 2004. Routson also created an edit of

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

's Cremaster 4. Routson cut a VHS recording of Barney's film down to a television standard 22 minutes, added television commercials, credits, and an

ABC television ABC Television most commonly refers to: *ABC Television Network of the American Broadcasting Company, United States, or *ABC Television (Australian TV network), a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia ABC Television or ABC ...

watermark logo. The work was intended to emulate the ABC program '' Saturday Night Movie''. Routson work has faced legal complications. On October 1, 2004, Maryland ruled the unauthorized use of recording equipment inside a movie theater illegal. Routson accordingly stopped his bootlegging practice in 2004. Other of Routson's projects include a photography series in which he takes or purchases photographs of shopping-mall Easter bunnies sitting or standing by themselves, and the 2003 work ''My Guitar'' in which Routson displayed his Fender guitar along with a "For Sale" flyer. Reception of Routson's work has been mixed. One critic praises his ''Bootlegs'', claiming the works give "urgency and pleasure to questions about art in the age of mechanical reproduction, long after the low-tech

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

had turned them into truisms." Another, however, describes his appropriation work as "lazy" and "vampiric".

Exhibition and representation

Routson is represented by the

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Below is a list of selected solo and group exhibitions.

2009

Team Gallery, New York, NY, ''Arcangel, Pinard, Routson''

2007

Current Gallery, Baltimore, MD, ''feel this dead vibration''

2004

Team Gallery, New York, NY, ''recordings II''

2003

Team Gallery, New York, NY, ''recordings'' White Columns, New York, NY, ''Mama’s Boy''

2002

MoCA-D.C., Washington, D.C., ''Jon Routson'' Flat, New York, NY, ''Episode II''

2001

Team, Project Room, New York, ''Carrie/Porky's: Originality, Neatness, and Hygiene''

1999

CRP Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and thing.net, ''Jon Routson's Bootleg''

1992

Dooley LeCappelaine Gallery, New York, NY, ''Free Kittens''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Routson, Jon Date of birth missing (living people) Living people 1969 births 20th-century American male artists 21st-century American male artists American conceptual artists American new media artists American video artists Artists from Baltimore Artists from Washington, D.C. Corcoran School of the Arts and Design faculty Maryland Institute College of Art alumni People from Kensington, Maryland University of Maryland, College Park alumni