An exhibition of eight video artworks,
each of which subjects a particular song to a wild but discerning transformation.Double Karen (Close to You)
Candice Breitz
Germany, single channel videos on podiums (2000)
In a brutally abridged version of a pre-MTV music video, Karen Carpenter sings "Me, Me, Me, Me," on a monitor placed on one side of a passage-like room, across from a second Karen Carpenter whose overlapping reply is "You, You, You…." Presisting inside the stutter that holds each figure fixed in the first or second person, is the easily conjured melancholy romance of the original song. The relay between the two describes a compulsion that alternately feels like a contest or a desperate insistence.
Candice Breitz is a video artist best known for her work exploring the visual conventions of popular culture. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1972 and completed her M.A. at the University of Chicago and her M.Phil at Columbia University. She is currently Professor of Fine Art at the Braunschweig University of Art in Germany. Breitz has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle (Berlin), Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), White Cube (London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and, currently has a solo exhibition at The Power Plant (Toronto).
