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5/9/2003

Candice Breitz

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

In her latest installation Becoming (2003), Candice Breitz slips into the roles of 7 popular Hollywood actresses (Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Meg Ryan, Neve Campbell, Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore). Having cut-and-paste short sequences of these actresses out of various films (in the process isolating the actresses by eliminating the actors who appeared opposite them), Breitz re-enacts their performances as precisely as possible. Instead of mercilessly parodying the sequences that she copycats, Breitz mimics them earnestly and with feeling. The original soundtrack of each movie is preserved in the new footage, so that each new film starring Breitz might be described as a kind of body-karaoke.

Becoming is presented as a series of seven double-channel works. In each case, two monitors are set back-to-back: the first monitor displays the 'original' footage (for example, Julia Roberts excerpted from Pretty Woman, or Cameron Diaz extracted from The Sweetest Thing), while the second monitor plays back Breitz's re-performance. The original and copy are bound together like Siamese twins, not only by their spine-to-spine presentation, but also by their identical duration, and because they share the same voice: the original Hollywood soundtrack underlies both the source clip and the Breitz version, making the two inseparable. The back-to-back positioning of each double-sided installation frustrates the simultaneous viewing of the two pieces of footage, forcing the viewer to circle around the work in order to compare them. Throughout her performances, Breitz wears the same simple attire (black pants, white blouse). The copycat films are all set in the same nondescript bright space, a stark white cube of sorts. The sober effect is heightened by the contrast between the lush color footage of the Hollywood clips, and the simple black-and-white footage of Breitz.

Becoming raises many of the complex questions facing contemporary subjectivity, focusing in particular on the way in which identity increasingly takes its cues from media-produced prototypes. Inversely, the work might be read to suggest, that screen icons achieve stardom precisely because - beyond the clichés that they perpetuate - ultimately, we imagine these stars as 'real' people. Writing in the twenties, Siegfried Kracauer had already detected this loop: "Film and life reflect each other because the little working ladies model themselves on the stars they see on the screen. It may however be the case that the most hypocritical of these stars are in fact based on real life.' Incidentally, the title of Breitz's installation alludes to an MTV program, in which teenagers are given the chance to re-perform a music video starring their favourite pop star.

Breitz has recently had solo exhibitions at De Appel Foundation (Amsterdam), Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève (Geneva), New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), Kunstverein St. Gallen Kunstmuseum (St. Gallen), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Museum Folkwang / RWE-Turm (Essen) and the O.K Center for Contemporary Art Upper Austria (Linz).

Galerie Max Hetzler
Holzmarktstrasse 15 - 18
S-Bahnbogen 48
D-10179 Berlin
Phone (+4930) 240 45 630
Fax (+4930) 240 45 632

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