Daria Martin

 

Exhibition Run: 24 May - Sunday 12 June 2005

Private View: Tuesday 24 May 2005, 7:00PM - 9:00PM

Curated by David Bussel

Cubitt presents Daria Martin at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
Exhibition 24 May – 12 June 2005 Opening 24 May 7-9pm

Daria Martin’s 16mm film trilogy looks back to the first European avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century. Without a dominant narrative, dialogue or character development as such, the films convey a vivid sense of the euphoria and passion of utopian spirit. Although located in an undetermined time and space, they employ the language of vanguard culture through colour, extreme artifice and abstract form as the universal tropes of the period; but at a distance, underlining their historicity and therefore, the failure of such projects.

In the Palace (2000), titled after Giacometti’s sculpture The Palace at 4am, is a kind of tableaux vivant, where the camera languidly encircles a group of fancifully attired actors, referencing both Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and Oscar Schlemmer’s Slat Dance performance at the Bauhaus. Birds (2001) similarly depicts a group of actor-dancers dressed in multi-coloured costumes performing discrete actions with cardboard props. In Closeup Gallery (2003) we witness a magician and his assistant performing card tricks on a clear, round three-tiered table, the “stage” where their sleight of hand is performed and displayed in vivid colour like kinetic Suprematist paintings.

Daria Martin (b. 1973, USA) has had recent solo exhibitions at the Showroom and Hotel, and was a nominated for Beck’s Futures prize at the ICA (London).