 Negative Painting #6, 2002 Oil on canvas, 103" x 75" David Krippendorff Krippendorff was born in 1967 to a German father and an American mother, but lived most of his childhood and teenage years in Rome before moving to Berlin to study art. He now divides his time between New York City and Berlin. This biographical information is useful for understanding the poetic his work is built around. The theme running through the various media in this show is the artist's fascination with the classic American film "The Wizard of Oz". To a young boy hoping to fashion a sense of home out of the fabric of three different nationalities, Dorothy's adventure must have seemed an anchoring promise and a welcome way to participate in a collective imagination. But the child grows up, and this seemingly unifying fantasy turns out to be an ominous example of American mythmaking. For these and other reasons, the cinematic vision has become the seductive raw material which the artist uses in sensuous and unexpected ways, to investigate and question accepted notions of home, country and cultural identity. Krippendorff's video, "Beyond the moon" twists image and color to invert the heroic journey and create a glittering sense of shattered promises. The dream-like search for a road home is shown to be closer to an enchanting nightmare. The artist's large "curtain paintings" displace and disorient the film even further; movie stills become wavelike illusions of image and light and evocative still lives which offer a stirring sense of doubt against Hollywood's over-simplified notions of home. The glossy sheen of digital photographs continues the strategic duality between beauty and danger. Cold and seductive, these images play with the allure of the film's scenery while at the same time using the material distance of painting and print to question the value of these myths. February 7 - March 15, 2003 Hours: Tu-Sa 11am - 6pm Massimo Audiello Gallery 526 West 26th Street No. 519 New York, NY 10001 Telephone +1 212 675 9082 Fax +1 212 675 8680 Mail info@massimoaudiello.com www.massimoaudiello.com |
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