Zilla Leutenegger
dal 9/4/2003 al 15/5/2003
Segnalato da
9/4/2003
Zilla Leutenegger
Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York
Zilla Leutenegger brings to video and digital technology the freedom and expressiveness of drawing. Her digital animations are highly personal reflections on the artist and her place in the world. They usually feature Leutenegger herself exploring a range of personae, often in order to reconfigure feminine stereotypes in unexpected ways. Her work represents a test of the artist's willpower and ability to act in the world with decisiveness and agency.
Zilla Leutenegger brings to video and digital technology the freedom and expressiveness of drawing. Her digital animations are highly personal reflections on the artist and her place in the world. They usually feature Leutenegger herself exploring a range of personae, often in order to reconfigure feminine stereotypes in unexpected ways. Her work represents a test of the artist's willpower and ability to act in the world with decisiveness and agency.
In 'The Man In The Moon' (2000) and 'Quicksilver' (2001), both digitally manipulated video animations, the artist demonstrates this metaphorical flexing of muscles. In the former, Leutenegger appears on the moon, dressed in a casual tracksuit and woolen hat. As the earth rises on the horizon behind her, the artist pees - standing up - into a lunar crater, whistling the refrain form Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon A Time in the West'. Here, Leutenegger pokes fun at a range of masculine frontier mythologies, while casually appropriating them for herself. In 'Quicksilver', the artist is dropped from a giant spoon into a pool of mysterious liquid. As the short piece loops, however, we see Leutenegger hitching up her pants from a squatting position, suggesting that the artist herself is the progenitor of the fluid.
In 'Mamoro' (also 2001), Leutenegger addresses our ever-increasing reliance on technology for communication. Here, the artist appears as an animated outline, talking on a cell phone. The conversation (in Japanese, with English subtitles) is actually a text taken from the Manga film 'Ghost In The Machine' by Mamoru Oshi, and deals with technology and the abstraction of individual consciousness from the world around us.
For her exhibition at Spencer Brownstone Gallery, her first solo show in New York, Leutenegger will be presenting a new video installation, 'Der Grosse Schnee', which makes humorous reference to her Swiss nationality and the pressure to perform on 'the big stage' in New York. The artist appears projected onto a giant billboard installed in the gallery. Against a panoramic background of snowy Swiss mountains, she lobs a series of snowballs out of the picture at us. Lying around the gallery floor, these snowballs are revealed as failed drawings, crumpled pieces of paper. With typical resilience and optimism, however, the artist will turn these failed drawings into her own success: offering them for sale as sculptural objects on plinths.
Leutenegger's work makes timely commentary on the importance of asserting individual identity in the 'information age'. Though working with the very latest in digital media, she avoids getting hung up on the tech side of things, understanding that technology is both a tool for communication and a shield which we hide behind to avoid real communication. Programming uncertainty into her DVDs and installations, Leutenegger brings a rare fluency and lyricism to the medium.
Image: Zilla Leutenegger, "Blow job", video still 2002 DVD
Spencer Brownstone Gallery
39 WOOSTER STREET NYC 10013 TEL 212.334.3455 FAX 212.274.1157