OODA Part 2
Screening
Curated by Helen Cahng
By Renee Petropoulos
Friday, August 7th - Sunday, August 30th, 2009
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Guest-curated by Helen Cahng, OODA is a two-part exhibition which features the work of Los Angeles-based artists Heather Bursch and Renee Petropoulos. The two works in the exhibition occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of duration—a trait inherent to video art and one that facilitates unique sets of relationships between artist, viewer and venue.
Renee Petropoulos’s Two or Three Things I Know About Gas Station Mini-Marts is based on the 1966 film Two or Three Things I Know About Her… by French director Jean-Luc Godard. Approximately 90 minutes in length, the duration of Godard’s film also forms the structure of Petropoulos’s video. The audio of the original film has been displaced and all speaking parts have been translated and re-spoken in English. The concurrent video - shot both in motion and at rest at multiple gas station mini-marts - loops approximately 5-1/2 times and ends when the soundtrack is complete. This misalignment between audio and video allows the possibility for the viewer to encounter a continually fluctuating relationship between the various parts. The automobile and the function of the gas station mini-mart serve to reinforce an idea of nomadism and dispersed centrality where certain functions of social exchange and domestic necessity are articulated. These conditions become interwoven in both the understood public arena and in the implied ‘private’ space of one’s own vehicle.
Renee Petropoulos has been exhibiting her work both nationally and internationally at venues including the ICA in London, The Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Blaffer Museum in Houston. She is the recipient of numerous grants including a J. Paul Getty Fellowship, City of Los Angeles Individual Artists Grant and an Art Matters Grant. Recent Publications include The Narcissism of Small Differences by Leslie Dick, Nearly Ten Months by Annetta Kapon and forthcoming Is It Possible by Chris Krauss.
Helen Cahng is an artist and curator who received her BFA from The University of the Arts and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. She is the recipient of a Leeway Foundation grant and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts award. Her most recent project, “RERUNWAY”, is a subscription based e-journal. To be added to the mailing list, send a blank email titled “RERUNWAY” to hachiko_station@yahoo.com.
