|
I
S A A C J U L
I E N
This exhibition will be the most substantial to date devoted to the work of Isaac Julien. The presentation will consist of a related trilogy of video installations and a recent work, which Julien produced during a fall 1999 residency at Art Pace in San Antonio, Texas. A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition. This publication will be the most comprehensive book on Julien’s work and will bring together the artist’s writings for the first time. Isaac Julien is Britain’s preeminent black filmmaker, an internationally recognized artist, writer, teacher, and scholar. His films include Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1995); the Cannes Film Festival prizewinner, Young Soul Rebels (1991); and the critically acclaimed documentary on Langston Hughes, Looking for Langston (1989). Julien’s preoccupation is with the representation of race and masculinity in film. While his work is certainly considered "avant garde," Julien employs conventional filmic strategies such as narrative and beauty to explore and subvert stereotypical portrayals of gay and black subjects. More poetic than didactic, his films are characterized by their dream-like imagery and sensuality. In recent years, Julien has moved away from the single screen toward the use of multiple screens. (He transfers his films onto laser discs for projection). He has stated that this arrangement allows him to explore certain compositional ideas that are impossible with a single screen and counteracts a kind of "conservatism" in how the viewer perceives images on screen. The exhibition will present the most recent of Julien’s multiple screen installations. The works in the trilogy are The Attendant (1993), Trussed (1996), and Three (The Conservator’s Dream) (1996-99). The intimate actions in these works occur in the public space of a museum although, unlike so many recent works by artists that deconstruct the concept of such institutions, Julien sees the museum as a site for exploring issues of sexuality and race. In The Attendant, a black uniformed, male guard (the attendant) and a black female conservator are the protagonists. The attendant and the conservator are locked in silence, and no interaction takes place between them and a white visitor. This silence is shattered by the amorous sounds of the attendant and the visitor making love in the museum. Julien thus presents desire and pleasure as possible avenues for resistance to racial and class distinctions. Although she remains silent, the conservator is an ally, enabling the encounter between the lovers. Trussed (a pun on trust) is a double projection of identical images side by side. A series of "tableau vivant" (which resemble "a Robert Mapplethorpe in motion" according to Julien) includes images of tenderness between a black and white male couple and the black lover in a wheelchair. With sweeping, circular camera movements and the doubling of the image, Trussed is a vision of eroticism and illness, and the complexities that AIDS has wrought to gay love and desire. The recently completed Three (The Conservator’s Dream), is a collaboration with and features acclaimed choreographers Bebe Miller and Ralph Lemon with British actress Cleo Sylvestre. The film is projected as three looped sequences side by side. An exploration of desire through dance, Three juxtaposes symbolic images with their religious, cultural, and social references. Through its collaborative nature and with its interdisciplinary references (to photography, film, dance, painting), it breaks down the barriers between those disciplines and beautifully unites them. The latest work in the exhibition, The Long Road to Mazatlan, was completed during Julien’s residency at Art Pace Foundation for Contemporary Art in San Anotnio, Texas. A collaboration between Julien and the Venezuelan dancer and choreographer, Javier De Frutos, The Long Road to Mazatlan examines the mythic codes of sexuality of the West (as they appear to these London-based outsiders) — in particular, the lone white cowboy and it’s trajectory within gay culture. This triptych of lush color and layered imagery combines cinematic references to Andy Warhol’s "Lonesome Cowboys," David Hockney’s "Swimmers and Pools," and Robert DeNiro’s performance as Travis Bickle in Martin Scorcese’s "Taxi Driver." As in the trilogy, the three screens allow for multiple associations and interpretations. Julien’s camera choreography, from the close-ups to the overlay of imagery makes the camera "not a witness but an accomplice." The exhibition catalogue will include photo-documentation of the works in the show, interpretive essays, and Julien’s critical writings, which have never before been collected. These writings offer fresh, intelligent, and accessible perspectives on issues of representation, particularly on de-essentializing black and gay identity. The catalogue will also include essays by art historian and critic David Deitcher and David Frankel, an editor at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and contributing editor at Artforum magazine. Deitcher is a New York-based writer who has followed Julien’s film and installation work, and his text will place Julien’s film installation work within the context of his other films. David Frankel will write on Julien’s The Long Road to Mazatlan. Organized by CCS Museum Director Amada Cruz, this exhibition is Julien’s first solo museum show. It will also be the first time the trilogy is shown together. The exhibition is generously supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the British Council. For more information about Center for Curatorial Studies exhibitions call 845-758-7598 or e-mail ccs@bard.edu |
