Supporting New Art.
Production Fund.
Candice Breitz
(b.1972, Johannesburg, South Africa; based in Berlin)
Candice Breitz’s darkly humorous films dismantle the conventions of representation to reveal the dysfunctional relationships and projected personalities that make up the idols of popular culture. Fascinated by the performative and its relation to duration as proscribed by film and pop music, Breitz uses digital editing to splice familiar footage into jarring psychodramas, providing a linguistic and structural critique of consumerism with the enthusiasm of an adoring fan and all the obsessiveness of a stalker.
In her two-part video installation, Mother + Father (2005), Breitz edited well-known parent-figures from Hollywood films into poignant soliloquies of familial breakdown. In the first, actresses including Diane Keaton, Julia Roberts, and Meryl Streep both protest and declaim their maternal roles; in the second, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Keitel, and Jon Voigt run the gamut of fatherly frustrations. Digitally extracted from their original contexts, the cast members are manipulated into an entirely new drama, and the relationship between star and fan becomes a creepy analogy for parenthood. In Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), the third in a series of intended ‘portraits’, Breitz filmed 30 Italian Madonna fans individually singing their way through the greatest hits album Immaculate Collection (with varying degrees of skill). These screen-tests are assembled into a grid, the cacophony of impersonations rendering snatches of accidental harmony.
Outset is engaged with Candice Breitz on her next project.
Candice Breitz’s darkly humorous films dismantle the conventions of representation to reveal the dysfunctional relationships and projected personalities that make up the idols of popular culture. Fascinated by the performative and its relation to duration as proscribed by film and pop music, Breitz uses digital editing to splice familiar footage into jarring psychodramas, providing a linguistic and structural critique of consumerism with the enthusiasm of an adoring fan and all the obsessiveness of a stalker.
In her two-part video installation, Mother + Father (2005), Breitz edited well-known parent-figures from Hollywood films into poignant soliloquies of familial breakdown. In the first, actresses including Diane Keaton, Julia Roberts, and Meryl Streep both protest and declaim their maternal roles; in the second, Dustin Hoffman, Harvey Keitel, and Jon Voigt run the gamut of fatherly frustrations. Digitally extracted from their original contexts, the cast members are manipulated into an entirely new drama, and the relationship between star and fan becomes a creepy analogy for parenthood. In Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), the third in a series of intended ‘portraits’, Breitz filmed 30 Italian Madonna fans individually singing their way through the greatest hits album Immaculate Collection (with varying degrees of skill). These screen-tests are assembled into a grid, the cacophony of impersonations rendering snatches of accidental harmony.
Outset is engaged with Candice Breitz on her next project.
Telephone +44 (0) 20 7722 5688
Fax +44 (0) 20 7586 6117
Fax +44 (0) 20 7586 6117
Email info@outset.org.uk
Registered Charity no.1101476
Registered Charity no.1101476