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10/7/2009

Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib

Kim Light/ LightBox, Los Angeles

Kim Light/LightBox is pleased to announce the gallery debut of a collaborative work by Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib. Black Hole features an immersive video installation in the front gallery and a surround-sound installation in the courtyard. In both works, the motif and conventions of film noir function as a metaphor for current and historical political discourse, highlighting the construction and subsequent control of narrative that lies at the intersection of moving-image culture and the exercise of political power.

Installed in a pitch-black room and projected onto a black screen, Black Hole presents an obscured sense of confinement and isolation. The environment introduces a sequence of shadowy interior images that rest on the threshold of visibility, and the projection itself appears to hover in space. Occasional breaks of light momentarily orient viewers to the projected image and its surroundings, but the illumination is fleeting. Bright images dissolve back to dark interiors and their accompanying sense of anxiety and disorientation. A surround-soundtrack of hypnotic buzz and martial percussion adds to the sense of confusion. The outdoor work, composed of soundtracks and dialog samples from classic film noir, reconfigures these sources into an immersive soundscape in which language and dialog are obscured; voices move around the space, seemingly in narrative fashion, but the composition falls between the structure of language and our ability to understand it. Soundtrack samples punctuate this disjointed narrative like special effects lending drama and intrigue. Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib live and work in Philadelphia.

They have worked collaboratively since 2007. In 2008, they presented the exhibition The Soft Epic, or Savages of the Pacific Northwest at Telic Arts Exchange in Los Angeles and at the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia and Black Hole at Artists Space, New York and Vox Populi, Philadelphia. Nadia Hironaka’s films and video installations have been exhibited internationally at venues including Rencontres Internationals, Paris; Shang Elements MoCA, Beijing, China; The Center for Contemporary Arts, Kitakyushu, Japan; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Morris Gallery, Philadelphia; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe. She is a recipient of the 2006 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Matthew Suib's projects have been exhibited at Philadelphia Museum of Art; Kunstwerke Berlin; Mercer Union, Toronto; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, D.C.; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; and the 2007 Moscow Biennale. Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib are the founders of Screening, Philadelphia’s first gallery dedicated to the presentation of works on video and film. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Jenny Jaskey. Jenny Jaskey is an independent curator based in New York. She is currently working on Portugal Arte 09, an international survey of contemporary art taking place in Lisbon, Portugal.

Pictured: Nadia Hironaka/Matthew Suib. Black Hole (Production still), 2009

Reception, Saturday, July 11, 6 – 9 pm

Kim Light/ LightBox
2656 S. La Cienega blvd - Los Angeles

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