Catherine
Opie: The Modernist
Regen Projects HOLLYWOOD | LOS ANGELES | CALIFORNIA | USA
JANUARY 12,
2018-FEBRUARY 17, 2018 Save to calendar
Catherine
Opie: The Modernist - Regen Projects
Regen
Projects is pleased to debut The Modernist, Catherine Opie’s first film. This
marks the artist’s ninth solo exhibition at the gallery.
For over
thirty years, Catherine Opie has captured often overlooked aspects of
contemporary American life and culture. One of the most important photographers
of her generation, her photographic subjects have included early seminal
portraits of the LGBTQI community, the architecture of Los Angeles' freeway
system, mansions in Beverly Hills, Midwestern icehouses, high school football
players, California surfers, and abstract landscapes of National Parks, among
others.
The Modernist
presents a dystopic view of Los Angeles, a city that has figured prominently in
Opie’s work over the years. The film is in conversation with Chris Marker’s
radical 1962 photo-roman, La Jetée, which utilizes still photography to tell a
story of longing, time travel, and the terror of nuclear apocalypse. Opie’s
film continues this dialogue, employing similar formal and narrative structures
to a different end. Focusing on contemporary issues like natural disasters, the
breakdown of the American political system, global tragedies, and the Los
Angeles housing crisis, the film stars Stosh, a.k.a. Pig Pen, a close friend of
Opie’s who has appeared in many of her photographs, as a struggling artist who
is obsessed with landmark midcentury modern architecture.
Composed of
over 800 black and white still images, the 22 minute film unfolds with swift
pacing. Each still captures the subject and his world from multiple angles and
vantage points, creating a lyrical cinematic effect. Throughout the film, the
protagonist clips newspaper headlines and product advertisements and assembles
them together to construct an elaborate collage that echoes his psychological
state. The multilayered collage illustrates his frustrations and desires and
provides a visible catalyst for the destruction that is to come. Over the
course of the film his inability to obtain these desires and dreams drives him
to commit acts of arson, methodically setting fire to iconic buildings
throughout the city. Yet the film’s oneiric quality forces the viewer to
question whether what transpires is an act of destruction or a dream.
For the
exhibition at Regen Projects, Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan
constructed a theatre within the gallery in which visitors can view the film.
The architectural design of the theatre mimics the lines and curves of the
various modernist structures portrayed in the film. Along the walls of the
gallery, 33 photographs depicting various scenes from the film provide an
alternative way to experience the work.
Info
6750 Santa
Monica Boulevard , Hollywood - Los Angeles, CA, USA 90038
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