Susan Hiller
Kunsthalle Nurnberg
Even though I have not had a chance to blog much so far this year, my life has still been centered around art. Already at the first open day of the year I dutifully placed myself at two museums in my closest proximity, the Neues Museum and Kunsthalle in Nurnberg.
At the Kunsthalle they were showing Susan Hiller. I had actually seen this exhibition at the Tate Britain last year, but a new location always add another dimension to the viewing.
I liked the way you walked behind a screening wall into another room, and then another room like a Matryoshka doll (Except the last room was the largest).
Susan Hiller is an American Artist born in Florida, 1940. She has lived in London though since 1969 so she is now considered a British Artist, actually one of Britain's most influential artists.
Psl Girls 1999
With Psl Girls there are 5 synchronized programs running on a rectangular long screen, and the screen it is running on keep rotating spaces. It is quite a psychological and mystical journey she takes you on.
When I was adding my photos right now I found these two shots of the girl quite bewitching. In the top one she looks vulnerable and perplexed and in the next one strong and determined. Interesting how we can have such emotional range in a very short time, it made me think about how easy it must be to misunderstand one another, or brain works so quickly and our expressions might show some of our thoughts while we would never think of expressing them all.
"In her works, she reconciles the contradictions between conceptual art and empathy, between the rational and the unconscious or even uncanny. Taking as her point of departure forgotten, overlooked or repressed phenomena in our western culture, as well as personal memories both collective and unconscious, Hiller attempts, with the help of pictures, language and sound, to give such material a form that can be experienced at the same time as creating a forum into which the viewer's own memories, projections and dreams can flow. The artist works with a broad range of media including film and photography, prints, found materials and objects, audio and video installation."
-Nurnberg Kunsthalle
Magic Lantern, 1987
"It's a terrible trap: when art becomes an identifiable commodity. It's one of the ways our society kills art. It's actually rather hard to encapsulate me in a show. It's hard for people to form an opinion about me at all unless they think very carefully." As Susan Hiller said in an interview with the Guardian's Rachel Cooke last year.
I couldn't agree more, it is always terribly exciting when an Artist can manage to keep the surprises coming! The halfway duplicates of a successful piece are always a bit of a disappointment.
...And, to the point of opinion maybe I can ask you to help me with it?
With Love
Kristin