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25/1/2011

Agnieszka Brzezanska

Michael Benevento, Los Angeles

Michael Benevento is pleased to announce 852 Hz, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of Polish artist Agnieszka Brzezanska.

Running simultaneously with Sound Waves, Light Waves, Dance Waves, a solo-exhibition at Clifton Benevento (New York), 852 Hz presents an array of photographs, paintings and video addressing interweaving concerns of the female body, movement and rhythm across a diverse range of media.

The exhibition’s title is derived from the rediscovered Solfeggio frequencies, a musical scale historically found in ancient ceremonial chants believed to enable and enhance spiritual and physical healing. Currently gaining traction as a New Age palliative, the frequency 852 Hz, is associated with a return to spiritual order.

A major facet of 852 Hz involves a series of inkjet on cotton paper prints in which images of iconic female dancers are eloquently combined with telescopic astral forms. Frequently using images of Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, Isadora Duncan and Bettie Page mashed-up with those appropriated from NASA’s cosmic gaze (the Center of the Milky Way, Pleiades, Orion, Sirius), Brzezanska’s images press together two otherwise divergent histories of movement mediated by issues of eroticized spirituality. Intersecting vernaculars of modern dance and burlesque combine in Brzezanska’s practice through the lens of performance. Loie Fuller/Galactic Center (2010), for example, figures Fuller against the center of our Universe, compounding an image of one of the pioneers of modern dance and silk costuming against a cosmic landscape of the Milky Way to illuminate a particular history of women involved in both the arts and science. Galactic and burlesque tropes become puns on “heavenly body” and “star,” in Bettie Page/Aquarius (2010), pushing further forward an awareness of and concern for issues of representability in female histories incorporating the use of the body.

As a female painter addressing the female form in canonically male medium, Brzezanska playfully deconstructs the gaze against a backdrop attentive to both a New Age philosophy and questions of cosmology. Equally important referents for Brzezanska’s work include questions of Harmonic Convergence and the scientific ideologies of Carl Sagan. The rhythmic gestures and fluid movements incorporated into Brzezanska’s oil paintings are informed by a calculated awareness of the historically tenuous and problematic position female painters have often held.Rather than strictly feminist, Brzezanska’s work suggests a democratization of life, terrestrial and beyond. In Pioneer Couple (2009) and Pioneer Couple (Drawing) (2010), a pioneering pair motif appears against abstracted starscape backdrops. Complicating relationships to both abstraction and figuration, Brzezanska’s images push thoughts of cosmic, interdimensional ascent.

Brzezanska’s Blue Movie (2007) is also on exhibition. Recontextualizing the Blondie single Heart of Glass (1979), Blue Movie presents a series of dancing female silhouettes cast in purple against a blue wall, with the pop-song as soundtrack. Recalling Andy Warhol’s 1969 film of the same name as well as an antiquated term for pornographic film, Blue Movie is a coy and wary yet playful deconstruction of a very complicated genre of representation.

Agnieszka Brzezanska has shown internationally, including solo exhibitions at Hotel (London), Kusthaus Baselland (Basel), DAAD Gallery (Berlin), Karma International (Zurich), Galerie Kamm (Berlin). Born in Poland, Agnieszka Brzezanska lives and works in Berlin and Warsaw.

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 26th 6-8 PM

Michael Benevento
7578 Sunset Blvd. LA, CA 90046
Tue-Sat,10am - 5pm

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