Christina McPhee: The Delicate Landscape of Crisis
Friday, April 15th, 21h
Remise, Freies Museum Berlin
Potsdamer Strasse 91, 10785 Berlin-Schöneberg

A premier survey of California-based McPhee's experimental films from 2002-2011 will screen Friday at Freies Museum, Berlin

Christina McPhee's video work is made of combined textures, colors and details of the landscapes she is exploring. The flow and beauty of her kind of compositing lies in its immersive qualities, which may even become hypnotic. The colorful layered textures the artist is creating with video are not unlike her paintings, composed by layers of expressive drawing lines. The artist is specifically exploring landscapes of destruction and landscapes that are shaped by large technological installations for energy production. San Ardo Oil Fields in Monterey County is a place for one of her videos, it is the biggest area of oil explorations in California. The film is a composition in red. Landscape, nature, moving oil pumps and spills of water, are combined with footage of Carolee Schneeman’s famous 1964 performance ‘Meat Joy.' Oil spills (of paint) on canvas, on bodies and on natural soil become one of a kind for the viewer. (“Meat Oil Joy Paint: A Tribute to Carolee Schneemann “ (2010).

One may think, that the kind of beauty Christina McPhee creates and the subject of her films contradict each other. The artist however would respond, that it is exactly this kind of contradiction she is aiming for. Living on the Californian coast close to Big Sur, a scenic area where many artists and writers found retreat to create work in the past, Christina has been sensitized for the scale of man-made destruction happening in so called remote natural sites, and for the contradictions of modern civilization spreading into areas of rough nature, including deserts, swamps and geological active zones. “I am opportunistic too. I shoot what I find. It is a kind of guerilla filmmaking.“ The sign „forbidden to photograph“ just triggers her interest, and makes her find ways around for both shooting the swamps on the North American coast, affected by the oil disaster from the oil platform Deepwater Horizon (“Deep Horizon”, 2010) and the area of destruction called “Ground Zero“ in Manhattan, N.Y. (“Seven After Eleven”, 2008). “I never ask for permission.“ The recorded footage to her then becomes material for her art. “Video has some material quality like painting.“ She focuses on details and nuances as indicators of massive environmental change.

Christina McPhee believes in the power of visualization. The artist searches for layers of future possibilities, latent in the very places of crisis that seem most desperate. In this respect, the material aesthetic and beauty of her films point to a chance for transformation even in the most traumatic sites.

Christina McPhee comes to Berlin for this screening and will be present for questions and answers.

Curated by Klaus W. Eisenlohr

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http://www.freies-museum.com/

More infos and complete text: http://www.richfilm.de/currentUpload/index.html

with support from Walden and Galerie Suomesta