GALERIE UTOPIA
SPF 2012 - BEAUTY OF FEAR - FETISH & FIGURE presented by Martha Kirszenbaum

SPF 2012 by Shana Moulton
Shana Moulton, SPF2012, still from video, 2012, courtesy of the artist
Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works, where she plays a character with surreal interactions with the everyday world. As her protagonist navigates the magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.
Shana Moulton will present the ninth installment of Whispering Pines, a series in which her alter ego Cynthia relishes the life-changing potential of home décor, beauty routines, and self-help mantras. Cynthia’s obsession in this episode, entitled The Undiscovered Antique, focuses on her journey to confirm the value of personally meaningful domestic artifacts á la The Antiques Roadshow. Moulton’s work is a layering of video, performance, and prop staging that is, in its more effective moments, abstract and dreamlike. Moulton will also present a curated screening program of science fiction films.
BEAUTY OF FEAR by Raphael Neal
Beauty of Fear by Rapahel Neal Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, Georges Cukor, 1944, courtesy the artist
French filmmaker and photographer Raphael Neal will present a night of featured films, short movies of his selection and music videos around the mythical figure of Anton Walbrook, an Austrian-born British actor famously casted in Michael Powell’s The Red Shoes.
FETISH & FIGURE by Martha Kirszenbaum
Ursula Mayer, The Lunch in Fur / Le Déjeuner en Fourrure, 2008, 16mm. Courtesy LUX and the artist
Fetish & Figure brings together six films and videos by artists and filmmakers that address both the fetishisation of objects and the exclusive relation between the representation of objects and the body. Exploring the theme of “tableau vivant”, this program challenges the presence of the human body that disintegrates, allowing objects to come to life on screen as the camera captures them. The proposed works share a common approach of feminine iconography constructed around sophisticated accessorizes —perfume bottles, enchanting jewelry and shimmering pieces of clothing —while questioning images of voluptuousness and consumption and, finally, reflecting on human solitude, existential melancholy and physical disappearance.

Martha Kirszenbaum
Martha Kirszenbaum is an independent curator and writer based in Paris. She worked at the Department of Media and Performance Art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Cabinet of Photography at Centre Georges Pompidou, and as a research assistant at the New Museum, Independently, she has organized exhibitions, projects and screenings in the United States (Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York), Europe (Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Galerie Crèvecoeur and Moins Un in Paris, European Culture Congress in Wrocław) and at the Marrakech Biennale. She was a curator-in-residence at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, and is currently guest curator at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna where she will organize two interventions. She regularly contributes for "Kaleidoscope", "L'Officiel", and "Voxpop", and has led seminars on curatorial practices at Université Paris VIII and Parsons Paris.