Overview
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to present a solo show with Steve McQueen, which will open to the public on Saturday, February 4th, and will run through March 11th. The gallery will be showing two very recent installations – "Pursuit," 2005 which was produced for the Prada Foundation in Milan in Spring 2005, "Charlotte" (2004) a collaboration with actress Charlotte Rampling as well as a new work "Portrait as an Escapologist" especially created for this exhibition.
Steve McQueen
February 4– March 11, 2006
Marian Goodman Gallery is delighted to present a solo show with Steve McQueen, which will open to the public on Saturday, February 4th, and will run through March 11th. The gallery will be showing two very recent installations – "Pursuit," 2005 which was produced for the Prada Foundation in Milan in Spring 2005, "Charlotte" (2004) a collaboration with actress Charlotte Rampling as well as a new work "Portrait as an Escapologist" especially created for this exhibition.
The video installation "Pursuit" integrates the surrounding space and architecture as the walls of the gallery will be covered with mirrors. The enigmatic images, sparkling shapes and outlines in constant movement become a series of infinite reflections which fascinate the viewer's gaze. In this visual and aural landscape, the artist succeeds in what he aims for: "I want to put the public in a situation where everyone becomes acutely sensitive to themselves, to their body and respiration." (Interview of Steve McQueen by Hans-Ulrich Obrist and Angéline Scherf, in 'Steve McQueen', Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, 2003.)
Next to this space, but more intimately projected is the work "Charlotte". For this 16 mm film Steve McQueen invited Charlotte Rampling to work with him. Her eye and surrounding skin is filmed in large red-tinted close-ups, teased and touched by the artist's finger. These sequences both sensual and aggressive culminate when the artist touches the surface of the eye.
Well known internationally since the early 1990s for his use of film as an art medium, McQueen experiments with pacing and editing, framing and unframing, movement and stasis. His films feature narrative and content as secondary to the physical or psychological fact of the moving image itself. Recently exhibited at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York as well as at ARC/Musee d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 2003, works such as "Once upon a Time", "7th November" and "Girl's Tricky" (an equally intense close-up of the rap artist) solicit a variety of sensations and show the force and mesmerizing quality of the works.
Steve McQueen received an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in 2002 and the Turner Prize in 1999. Born in London, he currently lives in Amsterdam. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions worldwide. Upcoming exhibitions include a survey show scheduled for 2007 at the Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He has had numerous one-man shows both here and abroad, most recently Prada Foundation in Milan in Spring 2005, Art Angel, London; Fundacio Serralves, Porto; and Fundacio Tapies, Barcelona. Selected group shows in the last few years include "Utopia Station", the Venice Biennale, 2003; Documenta II, Kassel, Germany, 2002; and "Moving Pictures", at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2002, among many others.
