[spectre] Exhibition, Edith Russ Site for Media Art

[info at edith-russ-haus.de]

Candice Breitz
Mother

Dates:
Opening: October 29, 2005, 8 pm
Artist Talk: November 15, 2005, 7 pm
Exhibition: October 30, 2005 - January 8, 2006


In today's media society, perception is often influenced by images from 
the (mass) media. Television and film images have a formative influence 
on cultural memory, Hollywood stars and TV-celebrities are the new role 
models in an expansive media culture. Candice Breitz's six-channel 
installation "Mother" addresses the meaning of mass media images and 
critically questions clichés perpetuated by the entertainment industry. 
Well-known Hollywood movies provide the source material which the artist 
has digitally reworked and rearranged according to her own script, 
thereby situating it in a new context.

On each of the six monitors a famous American actress is shown playing 
the role of a mother, mother-figures from different generations varying 
in character, embodied by women as diverse as Meryl Streep, Shirley 
McLaine, Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and Faye Dunaway. 
The characters are extracted from the context of the original movie and 
are made to appear as isolated figures on a black background. Their 
respective partners are missing from the original screen dialogues, so 
that the characters' emotional reactions become almost incomprehensible. 
Nonetheless a vivid atmosphere is created, in which the women relate to 
each other through their being mothers and seem to interact.

Sampling is no longer just a digital technology; it has become part of 
our life-style. Using Found Footage, pre-existent images and sounds, 
Breitz points to the images themselves as products of an increasingly 
dominant media industry. The deconstruction that Breitz works with her 
recycling of images enables a critical access to the use of images in 
the media and the motives and methods that lie behind it.

Along with the installation, Candice Breitz and the Edith Russ Site for 
Media Art for the first time present the newly created photographic 
score "One Minute of Mother" (2005). Stills taken from the 
video-installation, which has a running time of approximately 13 
minutes, are arranged into a large-scale photo installation. They are 
lined up to create an abstract representation of the rhythmic and 
narrative structure of the filmic material, so that something akin to a 
musical score of the flow of images and sounds of the installation emerges.

Candice Breitz, born 1972, has grown up in South Africa and now lives in 
Berlin. She studied Art and Art History in Johannesburg, Chicago and New 
York. Her work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions 
and she has participated in many major Biennales like Johannesburg, Sao 
Paulo, Istanbul, Kwangju, Taipei and Venice. She has had solo 
exhibitions at the Centre d'Art contemporain, Geneva; the New Museum of 
Contemporary Art, New York; FACT, Liverpool; De Appel Foundation, 
Amsterdam; the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and 
Castello di Rivoli, Turin. Her work has already been on display at the 
Edith Russ Site for Media Art in 2002 as part of the exhibition "Total 
überzogen".

A catalogue will be published by Revolver - Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 
Frankfurt, in conjunction with the exhibition.

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Bremer Landesbank.

Opening hours:
Tu-Fr: 2 - 5 pm
Sat-Sun: 11 am - 5 pm

Special opening hours:
December 25 and 26, as well as New Year's Day
Closed on December 24 and 31

Tours: Every Sunday at 3 pm
Group tours upon request

Admission: 2,50 / 1,50 EUR

Edith Russ Site for Media Art
Katharinenstrasse 23
D-26121 Oldenburg
Tel.: +49 (0)4 41/ 235 32 08
Fax: +49 (0)4 41/ 235 21 61
http://www.edith-russ-haus.de