Press Release: Candice Breitz

New Works: 02.1
03.14.02

New Works: 02.1
March 14, 2002 – May 12, 2002

Candice Breitz - Brooklyn, NY
Surasi Kusolwong - Bangkok, Thailand
Chuck Ramirez - San Antonio, TX

Selected by Jérôme Sans

About the Artist
Candice Breitz was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1972. In 1993, the artist received her B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In addition to holding two higher degrees in art history from the University of Chicago, IL, and Columbia University, NY, Breitz participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Studio Program, NY.

Solo exhibitions include New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam, Holland; the O.K. Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria; and at the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, Switzerland. Group exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria; Tate Museum, Liverpool, England; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Museum Ludwig Köln, Cologne, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. Breitz has exhibited in many biennales including the Taipei Biennale 2000, Taiwan; Kwangju Biennale 2000, Korea; 6th International Istanbul Biennial 1999, Turkey; the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo 1998, Brazil; and the Johannesburg Biennale 1997, South Africa.

Breitz was selected for her ArtPace residency by Jérôme Sans, Independent Curator and Co-Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. Sans is co- founder the Palais de Tokyo, an innovative contemporary art exhibition space. He is also an adjunct curator at INOVA, the Institute of Visual Arts in Milwaukee, WI.

About the Project
Breitz's multi-channel video installation draws on the language of the global media, appropriating raw footage from the familiar realm of popular culture to create new audio-visual landscapes. Using the strategies of both composer and DJ, Breitz isolates, splices and remixes footage from mainstream films, television programs and music videos. Her deconstructive method combines a linguistic and structural critique of pop consumerism with the enthusiasm of an adoring fan, such that viewers are invited to probe their own ambivalent positions as fans of consumerism and/or consumers of fan-dom.

During her residency at ArtPace, Breitz produced Diorama, a nine- monitor video installation based upon the long-running TV series, Dallas (1978-1991). For the project, Breitz extracts and edits footage from cliffhanger episodes into nine video loops, each dedicated to one of the series' main characters and played on its own monitor. The monitors simultaneously chant a repeating catalogue of dilemmas commonly associated with the late twentieth- century family. As the patriarch Jock Ewing repeats, "my barbecue, my house, my barbecue, my house…" the matriarch Miss Ellie whimpers, "I always cry at weddings, I always cry at weddings…." Trapped in another monitor, the daughter-in-law Pam retorts, "But what about love, but what about love…" while the tyrant first son J.R. proclaims, "He's no son of mine, he's no son of mine…." Dallas tantalized its audience with the promise of an impending twist or plot diversion, yet invariably depended on a stable cast of characters. The installation is composed of a litany of phrases covering birth and death, marriage and divorce, shares and heirs, annulment and adoption, suicide and betrayal. Like Dallas, Diorama delves into a cross-section of intimate traumas commonly suffered by the suburban family. Further highlighting the domesticity of the project, the monitors are placed in an ArtPace apartment. The viewer is never offered the relief of narrative development or closure and is left to ponder the relationship between personal memories and social memories shared as consumers of the global media.

In addition to Diorama, Breitz presents a series of five interior decorated listening stations in her playing time- or trend-specific music, with a fragmentary environment ground floor gallery space titled Your Sixties, Your Seventies, Your Eighties, Your Classic Country and Your Chicken Soup. Similar to Diorama, these "personal jukeboxes" investigate the way in which our nostalgia for the past is packaged and sold back to us as a range of consumer products and lifestyles. Each of Breitz's "nostalgia machines" forms an actual jukebox that is contiguous with that music.

Exhibition Dates
March 14, 2002 – May 12, 2002

Opening Reception
Thursday, March 14, 6:30-8:30 PM

Artists' Dialogue
Friday, March 15, 6:30-8:00 PM
Featuring Candice Breitz, Surasi Kusolwong, and Chuck Ramirez. Moderated by Jérôme Sans, Independent Curator and Co-Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Brown Bag Lunch
Wednesday, April 10, 2002, 12:00-1:00 PM
Join us for a tour of New Works: 02.1 and a brown bag lunch provided by Pecan Street Deli. Please call ArtPace to make reservations.

Event Locations
All events held at ArtPace, 445 N. Main Avenue. Free parking at Flores Street and Savings. ArtPace is open to the public Wednesday thru Sunday, 12-5 PM, Thursday until 8 PM and by appointment. There is no charge for admission.

445 North Main Avenue San Antonio TX 78205 t 210 212 4900 f 210 212 4990 www.artpace.org