October 25, 2000 through January 8, 2001

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive presents Continuous Replay: The Photographs of Arnie Zane, on view in the Theater Gallery from October 25, 2000, through January 8, 2001.

Best known as a cofounder of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, artist, photographer, and choreographer Arnie Zane first began his exploration of the human form not through dance, but via photography. Continuous Replay revisits Zane's work and provides a fascinating insight into the ways in which two very different modes of expression-dance and photography-intersect and inform each other in Zane's work.

Arnie Zane and Bill T. Jones met in 1971, and the two became partners until Zane's death in 1988. Dating from the same year, and printed in sepia tones, Zane's earliest photographs are posed, highly theatrical depictions of his circle of friends, and suggest an interest in the movement and posture of the human body. Zane's real strength, however, was in the genre of portraiture (his first dance solo, in 1973, was titled "First Portrait"). By the mid-1970s, Zane had begun to explore non-traditional subjects in his portraits. He also began to work on a series of nude torsos of Jones, other dancers, neighborhood toughs, and various acquaintances, with the aim of conveying through gestures and attitudes the interior lives of his subjects.
Continuous Replay reveals several themes, including a sustained investigation of the body, an exploration of identity, and the ways in which difference is created and expressed. The exhibition is confrontational in the manner of the dance company's noted works, and always aware of the expressive value of gesture and the relationship between sight and knowledge.

Public Programs
On Thursday, October 26, at 6:30 pm, Bill T. Jones will present a slide-illustrated lecture on the exhibition. This program is made possible through the sponsorship of the Consortium for the Arts at UC Berkeley.