Candice Breitz
The Woods
October 19–November 30, 2013
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
1215 N. Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10am–6pm
T (323) 464 1097
F (323) 464 1098
info [at] perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com
Facebook / Twitter, #PRGCandiceBreitz
Perry Rubenstein Gallery is pleased to announce an upcoming exhibition by Candice Breitz, to open on October 19. The occasion marks the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, as well as the American premiere of her recent video trilogy The Woods (2012), commissioned by the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne).
Consisting of three multi-channel video installations, The Woods zooms in on child performers and the performance of childhood to probe the aspirations and promises embedded in mainstream cinema. Consistent with Breitz’s interest in the role that mimicry plays in the forging of selfhood, and with her ongoing analysis of the circular relationship between real life and reel life, The Woods traverses three continents to explore the rituals and conventions governing the on-camera and off-camera personae of professional actors working in Hollywood (Los Angeles), Bollywood (Mumbai) and Nollywood (Lagos) respectively. Engaging actors and crews whose creative labor would ordinarily be subsumed into these three giant popular cinema industries, the three chapters of The Woods bring a behind-the-scenes eye to industries that typically prefer to mask their inner workings. As suggested by their titles—The Audition, The Rehearsal and The Interview—in each of the three installations that constitute the trilogy, a particular show business ritual becomes the locus of meaning through which to more broadly reflect upon and decode the myth-making machinery of mainstream cinema.
Two of the three installations that make up the trilogy—The Audition (filmed in LA) and The Rehearsal (filmed in Mumbai)—present aspiring and working child actors, situating them in scenarios in which they ventriloquize voices and personae that would typically belong to adults. The third installation, The Interview (filmed in Lagos), features Chinedu Ikedieze and Osita Iheme—two adult actors who are best known on the African continent for their portrayal of child characters—mining the format of a conventional celebrity interview.
Candice Breitz (b. 1972, Johannesburg) lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at international institutions including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle), De Appel (Amsterdam), the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus, OH), Pinchuk Art Centre (Kyiv), Modern Art Oxford, The Power Plant (Toronto), Kunsthaus Bregenz (Austria), White Cube (London), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and the South African National Gallery (Cape Town). Her work is represented in the collections of New York’s MoMA and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Fonds national d’art contemporain (France), the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebaek), among other institutions. Breitz has participated in festivals such as the Sundance Film Festival (New Frontier, 2009), Performa 09 (2009) and the Toronto International Film Festival (2013). She has been a tenured professor at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany since 2007.
Following the exhibition at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, The Woods will travel to the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston (summer 2014) and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (fall 2014).
Gallery contact:
Angela Yang: T +1 323 464 1097 / angelayang [at] perryrubenstein.com