Friday August 3, 8pm
Katherine Bauer
Cinematic Death Moon Return:
Impact Phase Performance
Live performance
RSVP recommended to rsvp@microscopegallery.com
Image courtesy of Katherine Bauer and Microscope Gallery
Microscope is pleased to present Impact Phase, a performance by Katherine Bauer in connection with her current solo exhibition at the gallery Cinematic Death Moon Return: Impact Phase.
For the performance Bauer activates the title piece of the exhibition – an installation work in which equipment and materials from an abandoned film theater including a 35mm projector, film plate, large silver screen, 35mm films and others are surrounded by dozens of night blooming plants and vines. The artist transforms the gallery into her darkroom creating a photograph by exposing the screen, which has been coated with photosensitive chemicals, to the light of a 35mm film projector that the artist will reassemble from its various parts that are currently on view within the installation.
Assuming the role of artist/alchemist, Bauer conjures the final phase of her myth of the “Cinematic Death Moon Return” in which the moon – once expelled from Earth in a volcanic explosion – is drawn back to Earth through the magnetic forces of the filmic technologies made from metallic elements excavated from a quarry that formed in its absence. The light of the projector suggests the ultraviolet rays of dying stars and the absorption of the light on the surface of the screen the formation of black holes or “frozen stars”.
“Near the Last Quarter Moon, light and darkness will be juxtaposed and combined during the Impact Phase … the Moon as she is pulled back to Earth will make impact with the Silver Screen. The fallen 35mm Projector body will be resurrected and burn into the Silver Screen its projected self. Instead of reflecting back out to us an Ultraviolet Mimesis, the point of impact on the Silver Screen will meet Silver Halides and be absorbed within their darkening crystalline forms, creating a Frozen Star Mimesis in its place.” — KB
Please note: the gallery will be in total darkness.
“Katherine Bauer, Cinematic Death Moon Return: Impact Phase” continues through August 26th.
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Katherine Bauer works primarily with celluloid film and the cinematic apparatus in works encompassing the practices of sculpture, photography, installation and live performance. Much of Bauer’s work involves mythologies, folklores, and narratives as told through the means of obsolete technologies. In addition to Microscope Gallery, her work has exhibited at Participant Inc., NY; Shoot the Lobster, Dusseldorf, Germany; Immanence Gallery, Paris, France, and others. Bauer’s solo exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, photograph magazine, and The Village Voice, among others. Her 2017 solo exhibit “Cinematic Death Moon Return: Forest Phase…” in Catskill, NY appeared in Artsy among their “Favorite Shows of 2017” and she was selected among the “Three Artists at NADA New York Who Are Reinventing the Photogram” in Artspace in 2015. Bauer received a ESP TV Unit 11 residency (2017), a Cité Internationale des Arts Paris Residency (2012-13), and a Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation Fellowship (2012-13). She holds a BA in Film and Electronic Arts from Bard College and a MFA from NYU Steinhardt (2013). Katherine Bauer currently lives and works between New York City and Hudson, New York.
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Microscope Gallery Event Series 2018 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
