Rineke Dijkstra at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris. May 2010 posted on June 20th, 2010
Dijkstra is best known for her Beach Portraits made in the early nineties, striking images of adolescents taken in the Ukraine, Europe and America, always against the backdrop of an ocean horizon. This series revealed the awkward beauty and fragility of this transitional age, and her new work at Marian Goodman continues this remarkably sensitive observational quality. The three video pieces were made during a residency at Tate Liverpool, two of them in collaboration with the gallery’s education program.
In The Weeping Woman three projections comprise a panorama of a group of schoolchildren interpreting Picasso’s painting of the same name. This format of a group tableau is at odds with the vast majority of Dijkstra’s photography and video, so often single isolated figures. The children exchange their ideas and questions with each other, there is no reference to an adult presence outside the frame, and yet they seem unnaturally well behaved, remaining in position and staying on topic. There is an almost constant hubub of voices (this as well as their thick Liverpudlian accents, necessitates the added subtitles) as they articulate their opinions, but for the most part they allow one another to before speaking. Although they sometimes respond to other’s statements, they very rarely look at one another, appearing to gaze through us, an eerie effect achieved by placing the Picasso image just below the cameras. This arrangement results in a strange feeling of separation between the individuals, and each exudes as much of an aura of vulnerability as the lone subjects in her other works.
Ruth Drawing Picasso shows a girl from the same school (the same quintessentially British school uniform, a dull grey out of which rise the contrasting reds of her tie and hair. School groups, as well as older art students, often study the classics by sitting prostate in front of them with a sketchbook and replicating them. It’s this slightly strange deconstructive/reconstructive practice that is shown here. Ruth’s earnest expression is mesmerizing as she scrutinizes the painting (this time just above our line of sight) and then looks down at her own version. We don’t get to see the girl’s drawing, but the intimate quality of the sound (probably a contact microphone under the paper) gives us a rich representation of every carefully made mark and erasure.
These two projections are beautifully installed on adjacent walls, one starting a few seconds after the other ends, subtly mobilizing the body of the spectator within the space. In the basement gallery, which is lavishly carpeted and sound-proofed, this strategy is progressed with the sequenced four screen installation The Krazyhouse, Liverpool UK (Megan, Simon, Nicky, Philip, Dee). This project harks back to an earlier work from 1996-7 whereby the artist set up a closed-off studio space in nightclubs in England and the Netherlands, asking clubbers to dance alone for the camera. The result was captivating, embarrassing, touching, and although at times hilarious, Dijkstra’s gaze is never mocking -for me the tone of these works bears no relation to the deluge of reality ‘talent’ shows.
The formula used here is exactly the same, but revisiting it pays off for several reasons. The high quality of the HD image and subsequently the larger than life projection, give us a closer more intimate relation to the subjects than the fuzzier 90s video. The earlier piece was long and single-channel, with many different subjects and elongated dance tracks, the viewer would choose how long to watch, probably not staying for the whole cycle. By contrast, the new work feels tightly constructed as a group of moving portraits which play off each other. Part of the success of this ensemble is that there is a much wider range of music than before which was predominantly rave and trance. Here we see very different musical genres, personalities and subcultures, from a goth headbanging to System of a Down to a shy indie-type girl who mouths the words to a mediocre pop number, scarcely moving at all. With all the dancers there is a constant oscillation between how much they ‘lose’ themselves in the music and how much they retain control or self-consciousness in the awareness of being seen.
Rineke Dijkstra is one of the most well-known photo-based artists working today, particularly in the field of portraiture. Whilst this show presents no major surprises, dealing with familiar subject matter of transitional moments or states, it demonstrates a graceful development in her use of the moving image. The combination of the two age-groups, with a few years and the huge chasm of adolescence separating them, adds to the power of the exhibition. It can also be seen as a portrait of Liverpool itself, a city currently undergoing massive regeneration and change.
The exhibition travels to Marian Goodman’ New York from 29 June. www.mariangoodman.com
