On view October 1 - 3, 2026 for Fall of Freedom
Opening reception: Saturday, October 3 from 2 - 4pm
(note: the artists will not be in attendance)
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For this year's edition of Fall of Freedom, Catharine Clark Gallery presents a selection of LigoranoReese’s short videos from 1992 to the present. Video has been a central element in LigoranoReese’s practice since 1983, spanning single-channel videos, installations, video sculptures, time-lapse films, and livestreaming of their ice sculptures.
 
The media room program begins with LigoranoReese’s video Deception, derived entirely from AI. The artists distilled and bottled the fragrance from melted water of the Democracyice sculpture installation on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., last October. LigoranoReese began producing television ads and point-of-purchase display videos, like Deception, in 1992 for their limited-edition series PureProductsUSA.
 
The Bible Belt was created and shot specifically for its video installations and played in the center spread of the Book of Proverbs on a small LCD monitor that the artists cut into a New Testament Bible attached to a belt with a custom, gold-plated Jesus belt buckle. In the video, an actor cast as a televangelist intercuts in a montage of on-air channel switching, scrambled porn, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts, Dan and Marilyn Quayle, and others hawking their products.
 
In 1995, the artists appropriated and re-edited Ronald Reagan’s 1984 Morning in Americatelevision spot and Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man for their Contract with America underwear ad. The limited-edition underwear features House Speaker Newt Gingrich screen-printed on the crotch and the RNC’s Contract with America’s tenets on the seat. LigoranoReese superimposed fashion footage of their Contract with Americaunderwear over the faces of conservative icons Rush Limbaugh, Bob Dole, and Ralph Reed. The ad was first shown in their installation Pillars of the Clean Order (1995) and opens their video Exposed and Debriefed (1995), chronicling the media’s reaction and ensuing uproar following the launch of the underwear.
 
The program continues with A Thousand Cuts, LigoranoReese’s time-lapse film of their Middle-Class ice sculpture disappearing and breaking apart in the garden of Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea, NYC. The soundtrack consists of Senator Sanders’s filibuster against the Bush tax cuts in 2010, known as The Speech, and music by composer Michael Galasso. Bernie Sanders embedded A Thousand Cuts on his Senate homepage in 2011, where it was seen over 60,000 times.
 
Truth Be Told is from the Truth ice sculpture on the National Mall in 2018 during the final week of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court hearings. The soundtrack overlays Donald Trump’s reactions to Russian collusion during the 2016 campaign with solo piano by Leo Wexler Mann.
 
The program concludes with their latest time-lapse film, Last Call – DemocracyICED, featuring children's readings from the Bill of Rights’ 1st, 4th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments, with music and sound design by Brendan Canty.

Pictured: LigoranoReese, Last Call DemocracyICED, 2026. Lenticular print mounted on aluminum.