Here and There

Keren Cytter / Here and There

Opening: 26/02/2015   Closing: 18/04/2015

Here and There, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2015
Here and There, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2015
Here and There, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2015
Here and There, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2015
Here and There, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2015
Siren, Still from video, Digital HD Video Duration 14’39", 2014
Siren, still from video, Digital HD Video Duration: 14’39", 2014
Siren, still from video,Digital HD Video Duration 14’39", 2014
Black Wheel, Sharpie on vinyl leather fabric, 298x139cm, 2014
Tim Buckley, Sharpie on vinyl leather fabric, 294x138cm, 2014
Red Hand, Sharpie on vinyl leather fabric, 304x139cm, 2014

Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art is happy to present the fourth solo exhibition  of the multidisciplinary artist Keren Cytter.The exhibition features three films :Ocean, Rosh Garden and Siren, all from 2014. Three new drawings that relates to Siren film and 35 Polaroid photographs.

 

Keren Cytter (b. 1977 in Tel Aviv, lives in New York) is a fertile storyteller. She works mainly with video and film and has made more than 65 scripts and films within the last decade. In 2008 she founded the dance and theatre company D.I.E. NOW (Dance International Europe Now) and in 2010 she co-founded APE – Art Projects Era, a foundation working from New York and Rotterdam with the aim to realize art projects outside of traditional institutional structures.

 

Keren Cytter uses visual media in strikingly original ways to build powerful and affecting narratives out of skewed scenes of everyday life. Cytter’s films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a non-linear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought provoking, and inescapably engrossing. Cytter’s pared-down style of filmmaking utilizes the barest of resources; she often films in her own apartment and incorporates intentionally kitschy, lo-fi effects. Even as Cytter’s characters enact intense moments, the actors are often emotionally detached from the drama or are even playing multiple roles; actions repeat themselves and seem out of sequence. Her work plays with the conventions of narrative cinema to reveal or upend unwritten rules, and as Cytter moves between multiple languages, plotlines, and genres within a single work, her work can foster anticipation and disbelief. Cytter also draws heavily on music to create a certain drama and atmosphere within her films. The narratives are often broken up and touch on themes of love, hate, sex, jealousy, revenge and violence.

 

The films:

 

Siren shows her typical way to narrate insane stories, mostly centered on the conflict between genders and based on disorienting flashbacks, together with new digital tools that create a new visual language and change our approach to images. In Siren Keren Cytter deals with “poor images” and their mass processing and circulation through mobile and smart- phone cameras. Images and scenes of different qualities are repeated to show the wide range of ambiguous possibilities of interpretation images can have and to insist on issues such as love and revenge: the female narrator convinces her male friend to murder another man in the name of all women to revenge unequal treatment in the battle between sexes.

 

Ocean opens with the written instruction, “Place your head here and your shoulders here,” whose letters compose the profile of a figure; the spectator is required to adjust, like in a subway photo booth. Then a voice starts: “If you don’t want to drown, be an ocean. You are waking up to the sound of the waves [seagulls in the background]. Your mind is an island. You are facing reality by yourself. Relax. Concentrate on the screen in front of you and face your own reflection.”

 

The story, whose fractured plot is told from different voices and individual viewpoints, as per usual with Cytter, takes place in a beach house. It involves a few characters, some of whom are lovers; a lonely boy; a bit of sex; several dialogues; and passionate kissing next to a bonfire, accompanied by the sticky romanticism of Leonard Cohen’s song Undertow. The voiceover, at one point coupled with the same pulsating binaural beats as Constant State of Grace, repeats instructions on what to do and how to feel until the circular logic of the video closes in on its last words: “Concentrate, look at your reflection. You are relieved. Your mind is empty. Your thoughts are public. […] You recognize your reflection and smile with the embarrassment of a blind date. Relax. Your mind is now an ocean.”

 

The drawings realized specifically for the exhibition, which have a dialogue with the footages from the film. The drawings on vinyl leather fabric become curtains used to play with the idea of theater curtains and of the installation.

 

Keren Cytter Recent solo exhibitions and performances include: Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014), State of Concept, Athens (2014); Der Stachel des Skorpions, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2014), Institute Mathildeonhohe, Darmstadt, (2014); Where are we Now, 5th Marrakesh Biennial, (2014); High Performance. The Julia Stoschek Collection, (2014) Show Real Drama Fondazione Trussardi, Milano (2013); A Theatre Cycle, NOMAS Foundation at Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome (2013); Show Real Drama, Tate Modern Oil Tanks, London (2012); Avalanche, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2011); Project Series: Keren Cytter, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); X Initiative, New York (2009); CCA Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2009).

 

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago will presents in March 28th the  first large-scale presentation of the artist’s work in the United States. The exhibition features eight videos from the past decade and a new series of drawings and live performance works. To accompany the exhibition, the MCA and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg co-produced a new anthology of all of Cytter’s film treatments-judged as “the best” or “the worst”.

Video Art Manual

Keren Cytter / Video Art Manual

Opening: 25/10/2012   Closing: 07/12/2012

Video Art Manual, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2012
Video Art Manual, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2012
Video Art Manual, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2012
Video Art Manual, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2012
Video Art Manual, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2012
Video Art Manual, Still from video, 2011
Video Art Manual, Still from video, 2011
Vengeance, Still from video, 2011
Vengeance, Still from video, 2011
Vengeance, Still from video, 2011

Noga Gallery is pleased to announce our third solo show with the internationally renowned artist Keren Cytter (*1977). In her exhibition Video Art Manual, Cytter presents her latest films: a premiere of three episodes from a multi-part series titled Vengeance (2012), and a film titled Video Art Manual (2011)

 

The exhibition’s title is taken from one of Cytter’s works Video Art Manual. In the film Cytter offers a historical analysis of video art and its development the last forty years, focusing on the conditions of how contemporary video art is produced, installed and consumed. The 15-minute work is a sardonic — and perceptive — take on video art and film, as well as their tropes, the same conventions the artist winkingly uses in her own films.

 

In the 3 episodes of the work in progress film titled Vengeance, Keren Cytter, who recently moved to New York, comes to terms with her own currently changing life situation. In particular, she takes up the US TV-format of the “daily soap” and processes classic themes of drama in personal relationships: love, envy, betrayal, and vengeance.

 

In contrast to older Cytter works such as The Date Series (2004), these new video episodes are less existential in nature and seem almost comical. What is also new about the exhibited films is their elaborate production. While previous works were often characterized by an intimate interior, Cytter stages these new episodes in the rich settings of Staten Island and New Jersey. The scenes were filmed at 15 different places, including restaurants, hotels, parks, apartments, and streets. A total of 50 actors, most of them professionals, fulfill their social functions with blank faces. They provide a projection space for the beliefs and stereotypes of each viewer.

 

Cytter takes up the concept of “friendenemies”, which has become popular in American soaps: two women, previously friends, get caught up in a perfidious contest in their daily office life, turning them into bitter rivals. In this conflict, both women are like puppets; driven only by the pressure of competition and the obsession with perfection. Not only the characters seem interchangeable, the story also stays intentionally superficial to grant the viewer a low-threshold access into the events. As opposed to previous Cytter films, the trivial dialogs of the series are not supplied with subtitles. The artist reviews impressions and clichés of the US American society, which have become part of our collective memory – not least by daily soaps such as Dallas or The Denver Clan. Cytter examines cut and dried patterns deeply rooted in pop-cultural visual memory and analyzes the influence of mass media on behavior patterns and prejudices in contemporary society.

 

The text about Vengeance was written by Natalie Keppler (translated from German)

 

Keren Cytter was born in Tel Aviv in 1977. She studied at The Avni Institute in Tel Aviv and received her degree from de Ateliers in Amsterdam. Cytter’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Moderna Museet, Stockholm;Tate Modern, London; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin and Kunsthalle Zürich. Her work was included in the 53rd Venice Biennial; Found in Translation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; 8th Gwangju Biennale; Manifesta 7, Trentino; and Talking Pictures and K21 Kunstammlung Nordhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Cytter currently lives and works in New York.

Four Seasons

Keren Cytter / Four Seasons

Opening: 22/10/2009   Closing: 04/12/2009

Four Seasons, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2009
Four Seasons, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2009
Four Seasons, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2009
Four Seasons, Installation view, Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2009
Four Seasons, Still from Video, 2009
Four Seasons, Still from Video, 2009
Dead Man, marker and pencil on paper, 74x58cm, 2007

Keren Cytter is showing two video works, Four Seasons (2009) and Les Ruissellements du Diable (2008), and a selection of drawings in the Project Room.

 

The film Four Seasons (2009) opens with a neo-noir celebration of late-Hitchcock-meets-1980s-kitsch: a record plays dramatic music by Ferrante & Teicher; thick fake blood drips onto white tiles; snow whirls through the apartment and a lone woman climbs a dark, smoky staircase.

 

As the film unravels, conflicting narratives are revealed, switching between the stories of Stella, a tragic tale of heart-break and domestic murder, echoing Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Lucy. A voice-over describes the building using its architectural elements as metaphors for human behavior. Climaxing with a series of spontaneously combusting objects – birthday cake, Christmas tree, record player – Four Seasons is a homage to all that is fake, showcasing visual cliches, lo-fi special effects and deadpan delivery. Yet, somehow, Cytter creates a sense of poignancy rather than of cynicism.

 

Four Seasons is not purely a deconstruction of the mise-en-scene, a comic pastiche or a cinematic critique. Rather, it forms a complex exploration of perception and memory; layers of language and image create a hierarchy of interpretation that is reliant upon collective and personal cultural signifiers.

 

Cytter’s work emphasizes only multiple fragmented moments of feeling. Cytter flouts her style clashes manipulating these cultural tools with results that range from the banal to the sublime, from the embarrassingly comic to the vulgarly surreal.

 

Adapted from Kathy Noble, Frieze Magazine 123, May 2009

 

Les Ruissellements du Diable (The Devil’s Streams), refers to Cortazar’s story, “Las Babas del Diablo” (“The Droolings of the Devil”). Cytter’s video, trails a photographer chasing an infatuation through the reality of a photograph. Via emotional projection, the photograph and the TV screen are his sole connection to Michelle, a translator on television. Both characters eventually realize they do not actually exist while the empty nature of the photograph remains. Softer than her usual approach, Cytter’s solitary focus in The Devil’s Streams complements the mood of the Asian music throughout the film allowing scenes, characters, gender, and stories to seamlessly collide. Re-presented through her poly-vocal and deconstructed approach to cinema, the stories and conventions she alters find a new relevance to contemporary times.

 

Cytter applies Cortazar’s self-conscious narrative by lifting lines from the text for a reflexive voiceover musing on its own unreliability. The two onscreen performers, a man and a woman, externalize the conceit by explaining the story to the viewer—and to each other—as they simultaneously act it out.

 

Cytter is at her best when pushing the material to extremes: match cuts that meld the two characters (the man picks up a cigarette from an ashtray, the woman puffs it) and shock effects (graphic footage of male masturbation) that ensnare both the audience and the filmmakers in the characters’ circular voyeurism. And yet, what is most remarkable about the video has less to do with Cortazar’s “The Devil’s Drool” than with his novel Hopscotch, which offers the reader alternate paths through the chapters. With Les Ruissellements du Diable, Cytter has managed to create an emotionally intact narrative completely devoid of a beginning, middle and end. The characters watch TV, smoke, sulk, jerk off, meet in the park, spill a bottle of water, and hold hands in a series of self-contained but interrelated shots that could be reshuffled without losing coherence or disrupting the structure—or so it would seem.

 

Adapted from Thomas Micchelli, The Brooklyn Rail, January 2009

 

Keren Cytter (b. Israel, 1977) currently lives and works in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums, galleries, and international biennials.

Recently she was chosen second among “Top 100 Emerging Artists” by the Flash Art magazine, and received the first-ever Absolut Art Award:

 

http://press.absolut.com/templates/PressPage____7458.aspx

 

Latest shows featuring her work include “Making Worlds,” the 53rd Venice Biennial, Italy, and the New Museum Triennial – “The Generational: Younger than Jesus,” New York, NY, “Television Delivers People” at The Whitney Museum in New York; “50 moons of Saturn,” The second Turin Triennial, Italy; The Yokohama Triennial, Japan; “Open Plan Living,” Art TLV, Tel Aviv, Israel; Manifesta 7, Trentino, South-Tyrol, Italy; The second Moscow Biennial, in Russia; and the Lyon Biennial, “The History of a Decade That Has Not Yet Been Named,” Lyon, France