Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present PLAY, a new work by Dara Friedman. The two-part film, completed as part of the artist’s 2012 residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, will be screened at the Hammer on January 8th and will also be exhibited at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York.
In Play, Friedman engaged seventeen couples--some real-life partners, others perfect strangers--to reflect upon and explore notions of intimacy through a series of interviews and improvisational theatre games. From this raw material, Friedman crafted a series of short, self-contained scenes, which she then staged on the streets of Los Angeles, at The Billy Wilder Theater, and in a shack in the hills of Topanga Canyon.
The film is marked by the development of seemingly disparate narratives that extend, at times, beyond the screen. This concern with conceptual layering is evident in the film’s title. “Play” simultaneously alludes to the performative nature of romance, addresses the structure of this scene-based narrative performed by actors on a stage, and references the video equipment that serves as our official conduit to the film.
Part 1 and 2, filmed in Super 8mm and HD video and 46 minutes in length, will be shown on a single, suspended screen one after the other. Even as fresh expressions of intimacy--poetic, familiar, often deeply moving--flicker and subside, questions linger. Friedman’s concern with Play’s physical framework, characteristic of her installations, provokes a curiosity as central to the work’s theme as is the film itself.
Dara Friedman’s work can be found in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany in 1968, Friedman now lives and works in Miami, Florida.
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