Teresa Hubbard/Alexander Birchler: Arsenal: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Hubbard and Birchler use the medium of photography to create images that introduce the viewer to a fictional world of constructed sets and anonymous, solitary characters. Exploring what may be described as the "momentary narrative," the work creates for the viewer an elaborate and enigmatic 'mise-en-scene.' The artists incorporate slippage, passage, entrance and exit as inherent physical and metaphorical aspects of working with the camera. These elements are key components in the architecture and narratives that appear in their images. It is also significant that the artificial nature of these constructed images are not hidden, but rather emphasized. Obvious lighting effects, disorienting or reversed camera angles and self-consciously posed actors, combine to undermine and contradict an illusion reality otherwise promoted so meticulously by the detailed nature of the settings.
The exhibition entitled "Arsenal" consists of a series of large scale color photographs. Furthering their exploration of the vocabulary of the cinema, the artists have turned to the architecture of the cinema itself. The “Arsenal” images reveal isolated interior rooms of a movie house. In several of the photographs, appears a young woman, whose solitary presence from room to room slips between proprietor, janitor, projectionist, movie actress, concession worker and audience.
Recent group exhibitions including Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler include Werk Raum at the Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin;Tomorrow, Forever, Kunsthalle Krems and Museum Sammlung Grothe, Duisburg; Signs of Life, Biennial, Melbourne; 48th Biennale, Venice, exhibition d’APERTutto and the upcoming Montreal Biennale. Recent solo exhbitions include shows at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and National Gallery, Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, Prague.