27 Nov 2015

Noga Gallery of contemporary art at Art Basel Miami Beach 2015

Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art is pleased to present at Art Basel Miami Beach , a solo exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist Keren Cytter. (Nova sector, booth N 11).

Keren Cytter (b. 1977 in Tel Aviv, lives in New York) is a fertile storyteller. She works mainly with video and film and has made more than 65 scripts and films within the last decade. Cytter, whose artistic practice has gained an outstanding international recognition, is also known for her live performances, drawings, and photography.

The exhibition will feature the film: Siren (2014), and four new drawings on vinyl curtains that relate to the film. About the film Siren:

Siren was created in Cytter's typical way of narrating insane stories, usually centered on the conflict between the genders and based on disorienting flashbacks, together with tools that formulate a new visual language and change our approach to images. In Siren, Cytter engages with 'poor images' and their mass processing and circulation via mobile and smart-phone cameras. Reiterations of images and scenes of different qualities unravel the wide range of ambiguous possibilities of interpretation, holding and insisting on issues such as love and revenge. The female narrator convinces her male friend to murder another man in the name of all women, in revenge for the unequal treatment in the battle of the sexes. Delicate decorative imagery, as well as images from magazines and advertisements, blend with acts of violence and dialogues on loneliness. The banal accentuates the drama. In the background, Tim Buckley sings Song to the Siren, performed in the folk version on the TV show The Monkeys. This song was featured in the soundtrack of the horror films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Lost Highway. Buckley, who died at the age of 28 from an overdose, serves as another motif in the plot, just like the song's lyrics.

Keren Cytter uses visual media in innovative ways with which she builds powerful and affecting narratives out of twisted scenes. Cytter's films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a non linear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conversation and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impression, memories, and imagining are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought provoking, and inescapably engrossing.


Keren Cytter's films portray characters entangled in complicated relationships, simultaneously connected to, and alienated from, one another. She is inspired by direct experiences and observations of her surroundings, as well as the films, plays, and novels of such luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock, John Cassavetes, Roman Polanski, Jack Smith, Tennessee Williams, and Samuel Beckett. Her work is carefully scripted and produced while maintaining a sense of spontaneity and unpredictability. While past films have been shot in her apartment with a cast of friends and acquaintances, her recent works were filmed with professional actors.

Writing
In addition to her video and performance works, Cytter is also a critically acclaimed writer. She has published three novels The Man Who Climbed the Stairs of Life and Found Out They Were Cinema Seats (2005), The Seven Most Exciting Hours of Mr. Trier's Life in Twenty-Four Chapters (2008), and The Amazing True Story of Moshe Klinberg – A Media Star (2009), as well as poems and excerpts from her diary titled White Diaries (2010). She also wrote the libretto for the chamber opera Le Voisin by Thomas Myrmel.

Dance and Theater
In 2008 Cytter formed a dance company called D.I.E NOW (Dance International Europe Now) consisting of 5 non-professional dancers. Their first production History in the Making - The True Story of John Webber, which was based on a wide range of influences including Pina Bausch, Samuel Beckett, Disney on Ice, Michael Jackson, Yvonne Rainer, and the 1980s dance-floor filler Lambada, went on an international tour and was presented in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London, The Kitchen in New York City, Tramway in Glasgow, and Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin.

Short C.V.
Keren Cytter's recent solo exhibitions and performances include: Keren Cytter, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago (2015); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014); State of Concept, Athens (2014); Der Stachel des Skorpions, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2014); Institute Mathildenhoehe, Darmstadt, (2014); Where are we Now, 5th Marrakech Biennale (2014); High Performance, The Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2014); Show Real Drama, Fondazione Trussardi, Milano (2013); A Theater Cycle, NOMAS Foundation at Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome (2013); Show Real Drama, Tate Modern Oil Tanks, London (2012); Avalanche, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2011); Project Series: Keren Cytter, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010); X Initiative, New York (2009); CCA Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu (2009).
Keren Cytter participated in group exhibitions such as: the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009 ), Manifesta 7 Torino (2008), Yokohama Triennale Japan; Gwangju Biennale (2010), Thessaloniki Biennale; Liverpool Biennale; The Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum, New York; The New Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; CCA, San Francisco; Hannover Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; CIAC AC Mexico; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; De Appel Amsterdam; Kunsthall Oslo; Fundacio Sunol, Barcelona; Marrakech Biennale; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and more.

Awards
In 2006 Cytter won the Bâloise Prize at Art Basel, Switzerland. In 2008 she received the Ars Viva Prize and was one of the four nominees for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für Junge Kunst, Berlin. In 2009 Cytter became the first recipient of the Absolute Art Award in Stockholm, and in 2010 she was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize.