Galerie Denis Cooper presents … a Halloween show

* (Halloween countdown post #7)

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Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook The Class, Death Seminar (2005)
‘In “The Class, Death Seminar”, lifeless bodies obtained from a morgue are the students. The teacher is artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook who stands in front of a blackboard, at times lecturing on the topic of death, and at times engaging a conversation with these students. Together teacher and students re-examine attitudes towards death andpuzzle over the life-after-death conundrum.’

 

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Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe & Jennifer Herrema Scenario in the Shade (2015)
‘It could be said that Freeman and Lowe kind of pioneered the current wave of creepy immersive installations with their very disturbing 2008 project “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun.” Their latest effort, “Scenario in the Shade” imagines a massive, slightly dystopian arts festival stretching between San Francisco and San Diego, and is infused throughout with paranoia and fear.’

 

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Sarah Sitkin Bodysuits (2018)
‘Through this collection -which accurately reproduces histories of anonymous lives, with their scars and the passage of time- the Los Angeles-based sculptress seeks to create the opportunity to inhabit other bodies to reflect on their real importance. A way of understanding the material that makes us an “habit” – the clothes that you can never take off, but you can learn to see beyond-.’

 

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Peter Caine Overseer (2005)
‘Even a decade later, Caine’s twisted snowscape populated by animatronic yetis with evil glowing eyes is still more than capable of haunting our sleepless nights. Wandering into the hellish scene was a totally surreal experience reminiscent of the classic Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special on acid.’

 

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Dora Budor Adaptation Of An Instrument (2016)
‘Steel, plywood, perforated aluminum, acrylic sheets, vinyl welding screen, vinyl- and urethane-coated laminate flooring, vinyl strip doors with mounting hardware, LEDs, motion-sensitive computer system, hardware, polyurethane foam inserts, hot-rolled steel panels with patina, protective wax, urethane resin, dye, amphibian props used in the film Magnolia (1999)’

 

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Ian Haig The Foaming Node (2018)
‘The Foaming Node tells the story of the last remaining observers who were members of a cult of sorts who followed the transmissions and evacuations of the mysterious Foaming Node, whose main project and mission was the distribution of the human body. This is their story.’

 

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Tracey Snelling Famous Horror Film Houses (2013)
‘Sculptor Tracey Snelling’s miniature horror world is, indeed, the antithesis of paradise. Featuring houses from The Birds (1963), Halloween (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the Oakland native calls the art installation “a homage to the horror film.”’

 

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Sarah Best Various (2012 – 2014)
‘Looking at Sarah Best‘s sculpture makes me think about the 1978 Hustler cover where a woman is being put through a meat grinder, next to a Larry Flynt quote stating “we will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat,” or the Cattle Baron poster showing the “choice cuts” on a naked woman. That is what Sarah Best is doing, juxtaposing dismembered female limbs and butcher’s hooks, some in white plaster, others painted like the gruesome, hacked off body parts they are.’

 

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Eliza Douglas Living Dead (2019)
‘Douglas’s video work in the exhibition appears as some fragmented version of the TV series The Walking Dead, from which she has cut out all scenes with actual humans. Her binge wathing performance as a postapocalyptic zombie in front of a large mirror-like screen, is a self reflecting and parodistic commentary on a contemporary social media centered life and her own objectification as a figure in the art and the fashion world.’

 

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Kyle Edward Ball Heck (2020)
‘A little kid wakes up in the middle of night to the sound of his mom’s television blaring.’

 

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Alex Da Corte Die Hexe (2015)
‘This site-specific installation, titled Die Hexe, which literally means “the witch,” transformed Luxembourg and Dayan’s Upper East Side townhouse into a ghostly dollhouse, each room featuring wildly different decor, from gothic velvet-coverings to mod mirrored walls. One particularly unsettling section featured a morgue, replete with cadaver drawers.’

 

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Chloe Piene Blackmouth (2004)
‘Chloe Piene is a fine artist known for her skeletal and morbid imagery.’

 

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Torbjørn Rødland Various (2008 – 2012)

 

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Cameron Jamie Masks (2019)

 

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Gabríela Fridriksdóttir Tetralogia North (2005)
‘Gabríela focuses, like the surrealists, on the spontaneous, but with the proviso that the spontaneity grows from the seed of the forefathers. She takes arms against rationalism, and bends the rules to her will. She seeks answers in what happens between waking and sleeping, the objective and subjective, or in the tension between the mind and the material world. She entangles the observer in her web of symbols, thus activating the web.’

Excerpt

 

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Gary Hill Tall Ships (1992)
‘Gary Hill created “Tall Ships” in 1992 in which he projected grayscale images of people on to the wall of a dark corridor. The feeling of the piece is one part “Twilight Zone” and one part “Strangers in a Dark Alley”. The people in the images move and appear to try to interact with the viewers. A girl runs forward towards the viewer, an old man glares at the viewer. The overall feeling is that the viewer is looking into the spirit world, and likewise the spirits are looking back.’

See it in action here and here

 

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Marianna Simnett The Needle & The Larynx (2018)
‘In The Needle & The Larynx, artist Marianna Simnett is in the hands of a surgeon who injects her larynx with Botox, a procedure usually undergone by young men wishing their voices to be lower. Shot in excruciating slow motion, the surgeon’s needle enters, probes, then withdraws from her throat. A hypnotic soundtrack whirls through a surgical description of the procedure, a pop song about Botox, and a confession of the artist, spoken in her newly deepened voice.’

 

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Pere Portabella Cuadecuc Vampir (1971)
‘Created on the set of—and as a parallel production to—Jess Franco’s 1970 Dracula adaptation, Cuadecuc Vampir blends outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage into a seamless montage. But this is no Brechtian attempt to cleave the viewer from the artifice of narrative: cinema’s “lies” and the means of their construction are undifferentiated, forming at once an opaque documentary about the vampiric nature of the camera and an eerily beautiful take on the Dracula story. It recalls the elusive fog of Dreyer’s Vampyr much more than the Euro-horror stylings it leeches from.

‘Director Pere Portabella obscures his source material through a variety of techniques including film negative, overblown light, and negative space, then cleverly cuts between “narrative” and “documentary” shots, erasing the perceived difference between the two. The sound design is essential: there is no live or diegetic sound, but a carefully manufactured soundtrack of ominous hammers, drills, and drones, broken a couple of times by witty musical irruptions that underscore the artist’s control over the audience’s experience.’

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Francesco Albano Various (2017)
‘The Turkish sculptor Francesco Albano has dedicated his creative energy to really grotesque and marvelous realistic sculptures of human bodies melting, hanging, dripping down or being distorted in wicked and horrific ways. In his most recent solo exhibition, called “On The Eve,” the artist presented his new sculptures. They seem like creatures, not necessarily of human descent, had shed their skin and run away. The draped boneless skin bags, without faces or any other signs of identity, create a truly unsettling view.’

 

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Ed Atkins Us Dead Talk Love (2012)
‘A two-channel video and surround-sound installation Us Dead Talk Love that focuses on a dialogue between two cadavers who reflect upon representation, immanence, and narcissism. The artist describes the work as “a tragedy of love, intimacy, incoherence and eyelashes.”’

 

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Monica Cook Volley (2012)
‘The animation video is projected in the back room of the gallery separating itself from its stars. Its content is a connected series of narratives meandering at times softly and at time psychedelically through the gooey seduction, birth and death of the creatures. The soundtrack is proof of the emotive power of music in film, as it wraps these sappy, gushy and simultaneously disturbing and disguising images in unconditional love. It truly is “hard to watch and at the same time impossible to stop watching,” as the press release notes.’

Excerpt

 

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Thackery Medical Museum 1842 Street (?)
‘Travel back in time to the dirty streets of Victorian Leeds to explore life among the grime and the bedbugs. Walk through the streets of 1842 and be surrounded by the smells and sounds of Victorian life. Meet the characters who live there and discover what was making them ill. Enter the frightening world of surgery before the discovery of pain relief and anaesthetics and explore the tools of the Victorian surgeon.’

 

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Wang Qingsong Iron Man (2008)
‘In Iron Man (2009), Wang Qingsong created a hero in his own image affectionately referred to as Iron Man. This term Iron Man refers to an oil worker hero (Qingsong worked in the oil-fields for over eight years) who dedicated his life to developing Chinese oil industry in the early 1960s. In this video this strong-minded hero has been beaten up by a lot of fists but always straightens up his head facing sideways as if Taking Death As Merely Going Back Home. He avoids the fist by playing Chinese Tai Chi (a Chinese body-exercise system of slow meditative physical exercise designed for relaxation, balance and health). Finally, though losing hair and teeth in the course of the beating, he still smiles at his opponents.’

 

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Phil Solomon The Secret Garden (1988)
‘The Secret Garden’s title recalls the Frances Hodgson Burnett children’s novel of the same name, but it could as easily refer to the wondrous cinematic space summoned by Phil Solomon. His techniques of chemical processing and optical printing create something entirely new from his borrowed reels of found footage, hinting at a composite story involving childhood trauma. The film teeters between the extremes of narrative and abstraction, wonder and terror. Flashes of subtitles mention a mother’s death and a plot for revenge, while faces of women and children appear as shimmering specters of light on celluloid then dissolve into a constellation of sparkling light. It feels as though Solomon has transported us to an alternate reality, a prismatic distortion of the past imprinted on the texture of celluloid.’

 

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Agnieszka Polska The Demon’s Brain (2018)
‘In The Demon’s Brain, a multichannel video installation created expressly for the exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Agnieszka Polska grapples with the ethical question of how individuals can assume social responsibility amid the overwhelming demands of the present moment. The point of departure for the work is a collection of fifteenth-century letters addressed to Mikołaj Serafin, the custodian of Poland’s salt mines. In her videos, Polska melds live action with animation to tell the fictional story of a young messenger tasked with delivering these letters on horseback. Along the way, the boy loses his horse and he gets lost in the forest. There he has an unexpected encounter with a demon, whose monologue fuses Christian theological ideas with today’s developments concerning resource consumption, environmental destruction, data capital, and artificial intelligence.’

Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Carsten, Cool, like minds and all of that. Yeah, Benicio Del Toro is terrific in it. No, RT is really not a horror movie. We weren’t playing with the strictures of that genre at all. Avoiding them if anything, especially with portraying the film’s ghost. Staying away from the standard portrayal of ghosts was one of the hardest things, but I think we managed. Rice & beans with plantains sounds so good I might just break my usual habits and down that combo, if my microwave can handle it. ** _Black_Acrylic, No, the writing class got cancelled again?! What is going on with these flaky proprietors? Really, what’s their problem? A small writing class is optimal. That sucks, I’m sorry. Go Scotland! ** James Bennett, I think my jetlag has finally vamoosed. Exciting about the Bob launch. Ever given thought to doing a Ssnake launch here, at After8 particularly? I’m going to a reading there on Friday by another New Narrative vet, Camille Roy. I’ll be here in late November. In fact, if you want to catch ‘Room Temperature’, it’s playing at a festival here on the 23rd and then gets its French theater release on the 26th. In any case, yeah, let’s def meet up. Well, you know I’m an enthusiastic booster of Paris as a home base. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s true, what a term. Cats and Bats is dreamy, or was last year. At one point you walk into this bakery set, and there’s a huge ‘oven’ that opens up and you’re forced to walk inside it and get ‘burned alive’. The graphic designer’s designs look like shitty memes, but our distributor thinks he’s a ‘genius’. We’re fighting tooth and nail, and we’ll see. They have ‘final say’ but we’re counting on them not wanting us to be angry. Of course love is an Emo! What else could he be? Love hoping that a little hunt he’s currently on to find a venue to screen ‘RT’ in Vienna pays off so you can see it, G. ** Steeqhen, Yeah, sad and complicated like most good things, sadly. I’ve avoided Pokemon Go for exactly those reasons. Which one is Steve? I haven’t played Minecraft, but I saw the movie version on my last flight, and it was unexpectedly pretty fun. ** Måns BT, Hi! That post was from about 6 years ago. When I went back to restore it, I saw that the boy’s mother had left a comment sometime between when it was originally posted and now. She said, ‘Why are you so interested in this?’ Which made me feel really weird since I don’t really know how to answer that question. I’m just making Halloween posts to get in the spooky mood. And I’ll be going to Parc Asterix’s pretty solid Halloween makeover event in a couple of weeks. And that, I fear, is pretty much all I have. I just did a search and the only things I found in Stockholm that even vaguely resemble a haunt are an Escape Room called ‘Fox in a Box’ and, more promisingly, it says that ‘throughout October, Gronalund transforms into a fright-filled oasis, packed with thrilling rides that will give you an adrenaline rush. For horror fans, there are 5 different haunted houses to visit with face terrifying clowns, zombies and cult leaders.’ So maybe you should do that? I watched the first three seasons of ‘Lost’ and was addicted to it, and then I moved to Paris and didn’t see that last season or two because it wasn’t showing over here. High hopes that Signe will say yes. That would be so great. Mm, I think you should be both flattered and scared. And probably not encouraging at all? Yikes. Tell me more. ** Steve, I don’t know ‘The Long Walk’. I’ll look it up. I watched ‘Sinners’ on one of my recent flights. It wasn’t bad. Not sure about the Whittier hell house. I know a church is involved, but I don’t know how wack they are. A friend is going this year and will give me a report. ** HaRpEr //, I weirdly, or maybe not weirdly, remember that Andrew Gosden thing. Yeah, it was kind of riveting. Assuming you’re still alive and not possessed by evil spirits, etc., how was the building? Not a total letdown, I hope. I didn’t know that about that political party, no. Are there any younger, newer UK music artists there who fall into that class eccentric British rock band category as epitomised, in my mind at least, by Sutch, Bonzo Dog Band, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, etc.? ** Bill, Hi. Yes, I think Dominik saw the Besson ‘Dracula’. Strange this sudden influx of classic horror monster update movies. There are at least two ‘Frankenstein’ movies out or coming out. Alvin Baltrop … I’m blanking. I’ll investigate. ** Stil, Hey! Second AD, wow, that’s a lot of work, or at least the second AD on our film seemed to be doing 5 times more work than almost anyone else. He was kind of a blur. Nice, though. The film itself seems interesting? Here too, it’s getting chillier every day, and the sunlight looks slightly ill, which is a big plus. I’m still all film work stuff almost all the time. We’re starting to do press for the upcoming theater release over here, so it’s a bit nuts. I just read some books I liked a lot, but they’re in a post coming on Saturday so I’ll leave their titles for then. I’m really liking the new 7038634357 album ‘Waterfall Horizon’. And Mego just rereleased Kevin Drumm’s great ‘Sheer Hellish Miasma’, and I’ve been listening to that a lot. Any hot tips from you? ** Uday, Geometry, ugh. When my math classes in high school started teaching geometry I just completely gave up and settled for barely passing grades from there on out. Love is kinda of overrated and over-defined, but it’s true there’s not much better. Love back in your direction. ** Nicholas., If I have to die, and I’m still not 100% convinced that I’m going to have to, I just want to know far enough in advance that I can get my shit together and not make everyone else have to do that. If only California was colder. Then it would be mecca. Or something. ** Corey, Hey. It was good to see you too. Sorry for being so lagged and distracted by the occasion. Everyone, or some of you, Corey has a tip. Thus: ‘For people in New York I recommend the Bradley Eros show at Microscope Gallery in Chelsea. Good experimental films and collages, and also some old posters from Downtown experimental film screenings. It’s on until Oct 25th.’ Hm, I think when I’m in the US, it still feels like home, which it sort of is since I still have an apartment there and go there not too infrequently. I think maybe if I actually spoke French I’d feel differently? ** Okay. Today my galerie is doing its part in my blog’s onrushing Halloween roll out. See you tomorrow.