Paris is Burning

Paris is Burning, is a group film and video exhibition that takes its name and sensibility from the documentary of the same name, made by Jennie Livingston in 1990.

Livingston's Paris is Burning is set in the New York districts of Harlem and Brooklyn. It follows a subculture of welfare recipients, prostitutes, black and Hispanic gay men, who refer to themselves as the Children. The film is a celebration of the position of the outsider, and the ability to transcend situations through imagination, music, dress and performance. Reality is transformed into something quite different in this documentary, and in the artists videos and films selected for this exhibition at Entwistle.

Daria Martin's film Birds (2001) presents a fantasy performance of stylized dance, fashion and sculpture that touches on utopian ideals of past cultural movements and imprisons them within the cage of a performing creature. Martin (b. 1973, San Francisco) has recently exhibited Birds at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, in The Moderns, at Castello di Rivoli, Turin, and in Group Show, curated by the artist David Thorpe, at Bart Wells Institute, London.

Remissionem Peccatorum (1991), is Sean Landers' humorous and poignant documentation of himself imitating the positions of classical sculpture in front of a simple mirror. Landers (b, 1962, Massachusetts) first came to international attention in the early 90s with paintings, installations and video works. He is exhibiting at greengrassi, London throughout June and July.

An opposite transformation occurs in Instrumental Version (2001). The Portuguese video artist Joao Onofre, (b. 1976, Lisbon) filmed the chamber choir Coro de Camra da Universidade de Lisboa singing an acappella version of The Robots by Kraftwerk from their 1978 album Man Machine. Recent solo exhibitions by Onofre include Nothing Will Go Wrong, Museu do Chiado, Lisbon curated by Pedro Lapa and Kunsthalle Wien curated by Gerald Matt, both 2003.

House and Garage is a film that sits somewhere between documentary, eulogy, poem, and music video, but ultimately it is a celebration and montage of suburban British youth. Oliver Payne and Nick Relph exhibited House and Garage alongside Driftwood at a Matthew Higgs curated fig-1 project in London in 2000. They have exhibited at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, the ICA, London and are currently showing at the second Tate Triennial Days Like These at Tate Britain, London.

In the 1980s Andy Warhol made a series of half hour television programmes for cable TV in New York. Like A to B and Back Again, and Interview Magazine, these TV programmes allowed Warhol the opportunity to operate in the culture that he had followed from the beginning of his career as an artist. Entwistle presents four classic episodes of the TV shows rarely seen in the UK.

Pressetext

Paris is Burning
"House of Chanel, House of Ninja, House of Saint Laurent"

mit Daria Martin, Sean Landers, Joao Onofre, Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, Andy Warhol, Jennie Livingston