 Filmstill from the "Baltimore Series (Angela in Orange)", 2003 Isaac Julien Baltimore Isaac Julien's New York gallery debut at Metro Pictures will present "Baltimore", a three-screen 16 mm film installation that is the artist's most recent work. "Baltimore" is rich in urban imagery, and like Julien's earlier pieces "Vagabondia" and "Three", uses museums as a key location and theme. Inspired by blaxploitation movies while he was filming his recent acclaimed documentary "Baadasssss Cinema", Julien appropriates the styles, gestures, language and iconography of the genre to create a work that defies easy categorization. Starring veteran black actor and director Melvin Van Peebles, "Baltimore" was designed in part as homage to Van Peebles' movies. The film installation unites three Baltimore institutions - the Walters Art Museum, the Peabody Library and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum - with blaxploitation cinema, the tough talking, hard-living symbol of black empowerment that Van Peebles helped usher in with his 1971 movie "Sweet, Sweetback's Baadasssss Song". "Baltimore" is ironic and funky, nostalgic and futuristic, rough and refined. It is characterized by oscillation and an insistent formal play with linear perspective which also pays homage to Piero della Francesca and more particularly, a painting of unknown authorship, c. 1500 known as "View of an Ideal City" which features in the collection of the Walters Art Museum. Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. Julien graduated from St. Martin's School of Art in 1984 where he studied painting and film. Julien's films include his three-screen project "Paradise Omeros" included in Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany and shown last Spring at the Bohen Foundation; "The Long Road to Mazatlan" (1999), made in collaboration with Javier de Frutos; "Vagabondia" (2000), choreographed by Javier de Frutos, for which Julien was nominated for the 2001 Turner Prize; Frantz Fanon: "Black Skin, White Mask" (1996); the Cannes prize-winning "Young Soul Rebels" (1991); and the poetic documentary "Looking for Langston" (1989). October 25 - November 29, 2003 Metro Pictures 519 West 24th Street USA-New York, NY 10011 Telephone +1 212 206-7100 Fax +1 212 337-0070 Mail gallery@metropicturesgallery.com www.metropicturesgallery.com |
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