Mounira Al Solh: Dinosaurs
Art in General is pleased to present its first international New Commission, a new film installation by Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh.
A series of scenes that seem both familiar yet brand new. A grouping of characters that seem to live in an eternal present conditioned by everlasting chaos and unrest. A set of locations marked by darkness and yet illuminated by the intensity of those that inhabit them. A narrative that instead of answering a specific question, is in itself a search for answers.
Mounira Al Solh’s new film installation, Dinosaurs, takes its inspiration from four different films by John Cassavetes. Culling vignettes from Opening Night, Faces, Husbands, and The Killing of A Chinese Bookie, Al Solh directs her friends to reenact specific scenes wherein the act of drinking reveals moments of intimacy, aggression, and loneliness. Invoking Cassavetes as both a means of study and a lens, Al Solh reflects on the relationship between substance and evaporation, exploring how alcohol can become instrumental in confronting fate. Dinosaurs’ fragmented scenes build a fragile portrait of a place in flux, a loose narrative that continues to unravel and unhinge with each drink. At once claustrophobic, circular and tense, Al Solh’s reinterpretation of Cassavetes creates a space of suspended chaos.
Katrin Sigurdardottir: Stage
Art in General is pleased to present Katrin Siggurdardottir’s Stage, a New Commissions installation in the storefront Project Space.
A miniature theater hangs from the ceiling of an empty, unlit storefront space. A single spotlight illuminates the theater’s stage, casting wild shadows that permeate the space and break through onto the street. The stage hangs precariously, a suspended moment of tension irradiating from within. As the day unfolds and the sun sets, the shadows grow stronger, marking time with their formidable presence. Though lit the stage is empty, the theatrics of such architecture being transposed to the shadow play within the space.
Real and imagined, miniature yet enormous, Katrin Sigurdardóttir’s site-specific installation, Stage, pushes beyond the physical boundaries of the storefront, compelling an immediate, direct, and intimate encounter for the passer-by. Emphasizing the relationship between inside-outside and passage-enclosure, Stage causes viewers to rethink their own perception of space, assuming an unexpected mise-en-scène that blurs what “is”, and what is imagined.
Theresa Himmer: All State
Art in General is pleased to announce the opening of Theresa Himmer’s site-specific audio installation All State, realized in collaboration with Kristján Eggertsson. Responding to the physical and psychological parameters of the elevator, Himmer’s original score toys with our perception of movement, expectation and entrapment. Using the repetitive motion and existing sounds of the Art in General elevator as her starting points, All State amplifies an environment already attuned to heightened sensitivity, positioning viewers somewhere between real and imagined space.
In the compact interior of the elevator, Himmer’s uncanny score of recorded sounds disrupts our notion of cause and effect. Through repetition, duplication and overlap, All State mimics reality and belies function. At once, signifiers of both visible and invisible operations (the passing of floors, the machine room switchboard, the opening of doors) become hollow, irrational and destabilizing.
