Daria Martin
Cubitt Gallery at Künstlerhaus
24.05–12.06.2005
Within the frame of an exchange project with London-based Cubitt Gallery, Künstlerhaus will screen a filmic trilogy by US-American artist Daria Martin (born 1973). Künstlerhaus will be present at Cubitt Gallery between June 28 and July 31, presenting an installation by artist group Honey Suckle Company.
The 16 mm trilogy In the Palace – Birds – Closeup Gallery refers to the filmic avantgarde of the early 20th century. Without presenting a narrative or dialogue, their films convey euphoria and revolutionary ideals of an utopian spirit. Although the films aren’t set in a defined time or place, the time is being represented by specific colors, artificiality and abstract forms.
In the Palace, named after Giacometti’s sculpture The Palace at 4 o’clock, is some kind of shadow play, in which a static camera circles around a fanciful dressed group of actors, referring to Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet and Oskar Schlemmer’s Slat Dance at Bauhaus in 1927. Birds shows yet another group of colorfully dressed dancers who perform strange actions with paper made props. In Closeup Gallery, a wizard and his assistant, four stacks of playing cards in blue, red, black and green and a revolving table with stacked plexiglass sheets form a continuously changing, visually appealing kaleidoscope.