23 Mar 2010

Candice Breitz at EMMA

Candice Breitz (b. 1972) is an internationally renowned South African photographic and video artist who lives and works in Berlin. This is the first time her work has been shown in Finland.

EMMA will show the music works King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson), 2005, Queen (A Portrait of Madonna), 2005 and the artist’s latest works Him (1968-2008) and Her (1978-2008) which remix clips excerpted from mainstream cinema. The works are multi-channel, large-scale video installations that are shown on up to 30 plasma displays, the central theme of which is the inflection of identity through popular culture and mainstream media.

King is a 16-channel and Queen a 30-channel installation, in which pop icon fans play the leading role. The fans, found via press advertising and the internet were invited to re-perform either Jackson’s Thriller or Madonna’s Immaculate Conception album in professional recording studios. They chose their own costumes and performed the album as they wished to. The result was a re-recorded version of the Michael Jackson and Madonna albums. With this work Breitz explores how pop music can become woven into the lives of the fans who listen to it and suggests the extent to which the culture industry is a part of our everyday lives.

In Him and Her one actor appears in different roles in a non-linear drama. The works are parallel 7-channel installations in which Jack Nicholson is seen in 23 different film roles extracted from films made over a period of 40 years and Meryl Streep in 28 roles derived from films made over 30 years. Multiple incarnations of the same actor converse with one another resulting in an emotional and profound dialogue in each case.

The exhibition has been realised as a co-operation project between EMMA and Candice Breitz.