Comments on: Sue de Beer

Sue de Beer

jenleigh — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 06:13:00 -0800

"From March 3—June 17, 2005, the Whitney Museum of American Art presents Sue de Beer: Black Sun. Black Sun, a new two-channel video installation viewed within a large-scale wooden house environment, furthers de Beer's exploration of the construction of feminine desire and unfulfilled longing." + "Sue de Beer's art is a mature reflection on the complex interior lives of disaffected suburban American teenagers. Her video installations, photographs, and sculptures are littered with references to the pop culture detritus central to our adolescent search for identity." + "By using the computer and constructing sets to contain the action, de Beer's enigmatic images make any fiction appear as reality."

By: misteraitch

misteraitch — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 07:00:01 -0800

Related: Julia Kristeva's book Black Sun. Distantly related: Nerval's 'Black Sun of Melancholia.' Not really related: Mandelshtam's Black Sun; Harry Crosby's Black Sun Press; the Black Sun in alchemy; the Black Sun in the bible.

By: planetkyoto

planetkyoto — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 07:12:12 -0800

I didn't see any images of the actual exhibition in those links, but on another page of the sevenseven.com site are these photos. It's certainly OK for an artist to be controversial, but I wonder if she isn't working in the medium of controversy and courting hype.

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 07:36:17 -0800

I love the fabulously crap cutout style on the sevenseven pages! Unfortunately, the rest leaves me unmoved. But cut-out dog pictures on the web! I mean, like, 1970! Woo!!

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 07:43:16 -0800

Great links; I'd heard de Beer mentioned by a friend who described her as a Matthew Barney disciple, but promptly forgot her name. The sevenseven site is a decent index, but a GIS yields a few more great images. Smell that teenage angst.

By: scheptech

scheptech — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 08:06:06 -0800

I can't make much sense out this material. What is being said? complex interior lives of disaffected suburban American teenagers Ok fine, but what about it? Why was this material created? Lots of pictures, some good, of complex teenagers... As an aside, I didn't spot any minority people in there, are all disaffected suburban American teenagers with complex interior lives caucasian?

By: Mercaptan

Mercaptan — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 10:59:48 -0800

I saw "Hans und Grete" at the Whitney. As one of the article mentioned, it's a two screen display in a room decorated like a suburban teenager's with shag carpeting and big big stuffed animals for the audience to sit on. You sit and watch these filmed going-ons, and it's oddly compelling. The story isn't anything like a typical narrative, but rather the rambling, boring, and often surreal life of a cocooned suburban teenager. de Beer captured the feeling of growing up in sheetrock palaces designed to foster rising property values, rather than human life, and a culture of material excess. I grew up in just such a place, and I'm willing to bet a lot of MeFi'ers did too. That she so heavily appropriated video game music and images is brilliant because Nintendo, Sega, and Sony were and still are the gods of the suburban living room. My friends played it endlessly and it sometimes seemed like they didn't have (or couldn't think of) many other good uses for their time. It was an odd environment to grow up in. As for scheptech's comment about disaffected suburban youth being all Caucasian, I'll throw my theory out there. I think there's some ingrained (genetic or social in origin) need for cultural identity in most people. I'm Taiwanese-american and thus come with a full set of weird customs, exotic cuisine, languages, religious practices, and superstitions, which, while I don't practice all of these, are still an integral part of my identity. The New Year's nearest to my heart doesn't fall on January 1. I think that suburban teenagers, and white suburban kids in particular, grow up in a very culturally bland environment. If all of my holidays were commercially exploited, I'd seek something more genuine as well. In a way this links back to the FPP about how teenagers view religion, with a very distant God and a lot of emphasis on being a good consumer. And I saw a lot of this in the homes of my white friends, where the past and old traditions seemed almost nonexistent, leaving nothing for these kids to carry on. When groups of suburban teenagers adopt the ways of goths, punks, hip-hop, etc. they are in fact creating their own culture to fill their need for identity.

By: dhoyt

dhoyt — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 11:23:27 -0800

^Post flagged for: "Fantastic post/comment"