Richard Kerr: Field Trips

Overview

The first of these films, The Last Days of Contrition (1988) peers at post-apocalyptic tableaux manifesting along the roadside, scenes from a decaying American dream in the waning days of the Cold War. Kerr followed this with Cruel Rhythm (1991), a compendium of southwest tourism bursting with combustible undercurrents. After two decades, Kerr returned to the theme of American desolation with Field Trip (2021). Made from crumpled photographs taken on earlier trips, Field Trip is an exercise where subject and form are joined in an embattled abstraction, flags and signs of restlessness bleeding through the arcs and ridges of Kerr's violent abstraction.