Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strange) #275

About

Featuring works by Claudia Bitran, Molly Hewitt, Rebecca Molloy, Ellen Nielsen, Molly Palmer, Pat Oleszko and Isabell Spengler, who explore possibilities and strategies of play and performance within video and film.

Curtains and costumes, stages, spotlights and sceneries, exits and entrances. All the world’s a stage, said Shakespeare. We're all born naked and the rest is drag, said RuPaul. Melancholy flowers dancing in formation. Pastel colored balloons raining from the bathroom ceiling. Fantastic creatures doing the most mundane everyday activities. Hypnotic choreographies featuring oversized wooden boobs and cacti. Our favorite pop music videos re-staged and re-enacted in tiny cardboard settings. Green screen flickering, voices echoing. What’s real, what’s fake and who’s „I“, anyway?

Claudia Bitran (New York City, US) In a Do-It-Yourself effort to emulate, remake and rewrite the hyperbolic world of pop production. She assumes multiple roles (painter, director, actress, editor). In her multi-disciplinary practice that works through video, painting, performance, installation, animation and sound, the obsessive nature of the act of remaking is always accompanied by the examination of the component parts that are used to construct products of mass consumption.

Molly Hewitt (Chicago, US) Molly Hewitt imitates, dissects, consumes and re-enacts archetypes, which are presented to us through movies and pop culture. Being a self-described drag queen and drag king at the same time, she attempts to relate, understand and subvert through imitation, thereby always remaining herself. Being intrigued by the grotesque, the violent and extreme, Hewitt unravels the mechanisms and meanings of cultural text to be re-used in an illuminating or empowering way.

Rebecca Molloy (London, UK) Rebecca Molloy’s works in painting, installation and video attempt to create an alternative understanding of the human form and its interactions with its surroundings. The daily bombardment of images, videos and sound fuels the environments Molloy creates, where our perpetual desire for self-entertainment and stimulation is transformed into an alternative painted reality.

Ellen Nielsen (Chicago, US) In her interdisciplinary practice, Ellen Nielsen investigates femininity, artificial nature, and kitsch though video, performance, sculpture and photography. Seeking to disrupt traditional hierarchies of tone and genre, Nielsen employs humor, spectacle, and beauty as a decoy for feminist political content.

Molly Palmer (London, UK) Using green screen compositing to transport protagonists into layered video worlds, where music, choreography and dialogue form cyclical narratives, Molly Palmer explores the strangeness concealed within ordinary things. Having previously juggled music, writing, painting and sculpture as separate practices, video allows her to work fluidly between processes in a way that unifies and transforms each element.

Isabell Spengler (Berlin, DE) As a filmmaker, Isabell Spengler works between the poles of film and performance. In collaborations with other artists Spengler develops concepts for experimental arrangements, in which visual imaginations are, with the help of photography, drawing, performance, costume design and model making, being translated into filmic structures.

Pat Oleszko (New York City, US) Pat Oleszko makes a spectacle of herself – and doesn’t mind if you laugh. Following absurdity to its unnatural ends, her work includes elaborate costumes, props and inflatables all incorporated into solo performance, film, installations, interventions and street-walking, ever in heavy disguise since the early 1970s.