Susanne M. Winterling, i'll be your mirror, but i will dissolve
Daniel Reich Gallery
Chelsea
537 West 23rd Street, 212-924-4949
August 13 - September 7, 2007
Opening: Monday, August 13, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
"Winterling seems to be focused on the fragmentary, and, more precisely, on the single frame as it, being the smallest filmic unit, contains a complete world in itself while remaining indivisible. The result is a kind of beating of wings, in which are own eyes become an integral part." -- Joseph Strau
Daniel Reich Gallery is very pleased to present a debut exhibition of work by film and video artist Susanne Winterling "i'll be your mirror, but i will dissolve."
Winterling's work gives viewer the material for constructing a portrait, an imagined identity distilled/manifested through specific images and references presented devoid of hierarchy or chronology. Though this identity remains elusive, the audience is able to form a multitude of hypotheses but with no affirmation of a knowable conclusion.
What the artist describes as "an impossible auto-biography" generates the "modes of transport for the narratives and their sensibilities." Hence, the viewer experiences a malleable landscape. This effect circumvents both film and photography¹s documentary aspect. The image remains temporal and the subject elusive as the work negotiates this nostalgic esoteric terrain.
"Play Winterling", a video piece, observes two women performing a mundanely choreographed transposition. A raincoat is exchanged repeatedly. One removes the garment from herself to dress up the other, a moment later the action is reciprocated by the other. As the activity continues the nature of each character is constantly reassessed. As the gesture repeats the persona of each character alters as though reflecting the continuing change in costume.
Through isolation the mannerism of each character is amplified, one of few signifiers in the relationship between these two women.
The elusive nature of Winterling's work involves an ambiguity which possibly the subject itself pointing to both the specific autobiographies of the women she depicts (fragments of Winterling's composite sensibility) and to the experience of an audience intuitively absorbing a subject in terms of their own subjective frame of references. In this way, Winterling's work
subtly blends method and content making subtle yet infinitely reflecting connections.
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