calendario eventi  :: 

X

16/1/2002

Breitz, Jankowski, Macleod

Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London

Video works using existing film footage and photography

The three video works in this show all use found or existing film footage or photography as their starting point.

In Double Whitney (I Will Always Love You), 1999/2000, Candice Breitz edits a Whitney Houston pop video to make a double monitor video installation. As part of a series of works called Four Duets where she edits in a similar way, pop videos by Karen Carpenter, Olivia Newton-John and Annie Lennox, Breitz extracts the 'I' and 'you' words from the performance and edits the words separately on to two separate videos which are then played simultaneously opposite each other. Reducing the pop song to its mere essence and stripping the pop star of her diva-like grandeur, we are left to examine what is left of the inane pop song for which Breitz seems to have little regard. ‘Candice Breitz is an unrelenting critic. She mercilessly deconstructs the objects of her attention, in the process unveiling our idols as discontinued models of obsolescence. She embodies the dross of the last thirty-five years in the Four Duets. She laughs out loud at the four singers and their now thoroughly decimated messages; then exacerbates the situation further by placing each singer in opposition to herself, such that each must be her own audience. A public is no longer necessary for these performers - every moment is perfected, learnt by heart, rehearsed a hundred times more than necessary. The content of the songs is rendered all but irrelevant. Are we then in the presence of psychotic split personalities or, rather, witnesses to the final stages of narcissistic desire?’ Frank Wagner, Striptease :An Analysis of Four Duets.

Christian Jankowski , in Rosa (from Viktor Vogel - Commercial Man), 2001, uses the German feature film Viktor Vogel, in which the director, Lars Kraume, tells of up and coming artist Rosa, using two of Jankowski works, The Hunt and My life as a Dove, as Rosa’s works in the film.. In return a contract allows Jankowski to generate a film work of his own using footage from Viktor Vogel. The actors in the original film are asked questions about themselves and their role in shooting and the recorded replies spliced into the scenes where Jankowski’s work appears. The piece raises questions about the relationship between commercial film and art film, about power in the arts and who is manipulating who.

For his work 500 Names/500 Faces, 2000, Kenny Macleod collected 500 photographs of faces from the internet, with no relationship to each other than that they had to conform to a particular size in order to be cropped for the video frame. He then collected 500 names and reads them out in the video as the faces are shown one by one. As he reads the names he makes mistakes which he goes back to correct, thus the faces do not remain in synchronisation with the names and the relationship between the names and faces is entirely arbitrary. The faces are all reduced to the same level. Their authenticity and personality is removed. Because the names and faces are so personal (often self-portraits that the men have taken of themselves for personal ads, or to send to family), the enforced connection between a face and an arbitrary name, and the continual breaking apart of this relationship, can be seen as a kind of violation. His interest lies in questioning the special regard that is given to personal individuality and the products of that individuality. Perhaps by breaking apart the symbols of this supposed uniqueness, a space is opened in which it is possible to reconsider how we think of our own personal identity which does not rely on a single fixed point of reference or truth which is represented by our own unique signature. By perverting the structure we use to understand ourselves, or at least making it more difficult to apply, the viewer is left less certain and more open to question.

Next exhibition: Christopher Bucklow
9 February - 17 March

and also

The Armory Show 2002
New York February 22-25 Anthony Wilkinson Gallery
242 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA (junction Hackney Road) Tel: 020 8980 2662 Fax: 020 8980 0028
Gallery opening times: Thurs - Sat 11 - 6, Sun 12 - 6pm or by appointment

stampa

permanent link