Baltimore. Isaac Julien's New York gallery debut at Metro Pictures will introduce Baltimore, a three-screen 16 mm film projection that is the artist's most recent work.
BALTIMORE
Isaac Julien's New York gallery debut at Metro Pictures will introduce
Baltimore, a three-screen 16 mm film projection that is the artist's most
recent work. Filmed in Baltimore at The Great Blacks in Wax Museum, the
Peabody Library, and the Walters Museum, the film stars the famed
blaxploitation film director Melvin Van Peebles and an archetypal, Foxy
Brown-type character played by Vanessa Myre. Baltimore, incorporating high
tech special effects and futuristic disjunction, pays homage to 70's
blaxploitation films inspired by the styles, gesture, language and
iconography explored in Julien's documentary film on the genre Baadasssss
Cinema.
The exhibition also includes the uncanny sculptural double of Melvin Van
Peebles that appears in the film, and large-scale still photographs made of
key locations and images before and during the filming.
Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works.
Julien graduated from St Martin's School of Art in 1984 where he studied
painting and film. Julien's films include his three-screen project Paradise
Omeros included in Documenta 11 in Kassel Germany and shown last Spring at
the Bohen Foundation; The Long Road to Mazatlan (1999), made in
collaboration with Javier de Frutos; Vagabondia (2000), choreographed by
Javier de Frutos, for which Julien was nominated for the 2001 Turner Prize;
Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1996); the Cannes prize-winning Young
Soul Rebels (1991); and the poetic documentary Looking for Langston (1989).
Corresponding to the exhibition the Department of Art and Art Professions,
New York University, The Steinhardt School of Education is pleased to host a
lecture by Isaac Julien on Tuesday, October 21, at 6:30 PM, in the Einstein
Auditorium, 34 Stuyvesant Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues at 9th
Street), New York City.
For more information call 212.998.5799
Reception 25 October, 5 Â 7 PM
Forthcoming Exhibit:
Olaf Breuning / Yuri Masnyj 10 January, 2004
METRO PICTURES
519 WEST 24TH ST NEW YORK 10011 T: 212 206 7100 F: 212 337 0070