tl;dr

  • EAI has extended an invitation to Trevor Shimizu to creatively reimagine the organization's office into a dynamic social environment where his videos will be shown.
  • The program with EAI is organized in conjunction with Shimizu's solo exhibition of new paintings at the gallery 47 Canal.
  • Shimizu is also curating an EAI residency at 47 Canal that includes works by Paul McCarthy, Carolee Schneemann and Bruce Nauman on view.

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Electronic Arts Intermix, the legacy New York video art organization, is initiating a new season of programming with the video art of Trevor Shimizu. Organized in conjunction with Shimizu's solo exhibition of new paintings at the gallery 47 Canal, EAI has extended an invitation to the artist to creatively reimagine the organization's office into a dynamic social environment.

Shimizu began working at EAI in 2005, where he quickly established friendships with legendary artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Dara Birnbaum, Shigeko Kobuta, Dan Graham, Michael Smith and Mike Kelly. Through prolonged collaboration with them, Shimizu assimilated their creative practices in the field of video art, creating works which are imbued with an acerbic evisceration of the banality of television and media consumerism.

The program at EAI features several videos by Shimizu which are semi-autobiographical in nature, with the Lonely Loser Trilogy (2013) and Lonely Loser Trilogy: Skate Videos (2013) among them. In these works Shimizu contemplates the nature of self-representation as channeled through different personas. He contrasts the personal and public identities that each of us possess, doing so through the lens of a lonely corporate tech worker who is fascinated by extreme sports. This fascination is mediated through watching skate videos from the comfort of his own apartment, and serves a poignant commentary on the passivity of vicarious viewership, which has become a means for him to compensate for his lack of agency.

A pixellated image of a snowboarder executing a jump.
Trevor Shimizu, Snowboard Gear from the Lonely Loser Trilogy, video, 2013. Image courtesy of 47 Canal.

Shimizu's solo exhibition at 47 Canal, a contemporary art gallery founded by artist Margaret Lee and art dealer Oliver Newton, presents his new paintings. Shimizu is primarily known for his expansive body of paintings which are crudely gestural and bare in their composition, yet subtle in their aesthetic. Among those works which are also semi-autobiographical in theme, Shimizu takes humiliating incidents and social faux-pas from the private sphere and brings them out in public. Shimizu is also curating an EAI residency at 47 Canal that includes works by Paul McCarthy, Carolee Schneemann and Bruce Nauman on view.

Shimizu is currently participating in the long-running group exhibition Shifting Landscapes at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The evening with Trevor Shimizu at EAI opens on October 2, 2025. His exhibition at 47 Canal is open through October 25, 2025.

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