STEREOMONGREL GALERIE MICHAEL JANSSEN - SINGAPORE, 2012
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For the grand opening of Gillman Barracks in Singapore, Gallery Michael Janssen is thrilled to present for the first time in Asia, Stereomongrel (2005), a film by New York based artist Luis Gispert, in collaboration with Los Angeles based photographer and music producer Jeffrey Reed. The exhibition is curated by David Hunt.
This twelve-minute film – revolving around the fictitious character of Hortencia, the young daughter of a white Upper East Side socialite and a Dominican-American museum security guard – explores notions of hybridity and cultural heterogeneity as a celebration of sub-cultural phenomena and their attendant stereotypes. En route to a slow awakening of her own burgeoning psycho-kinetic powers, Hortencia -- both prodigy and prodigal daughter -- embarks on a mystical vision-quest from a disappointing birthday party, to the exhibition rooms of the Whitney Museum of American Art, through the gritty streets of New York where she encounters boom-box wielding cheerleaders, geisha turntablist curators, and an Aztec Mambo King. Shot in super 35mm, the baroque fantasia that is Stereomongrel, can best be described as “hyper, supra, and marvelously real.” Blending the genres of supernatural thriller with Italian B-movie horror films from the 70s and 80s, the film’s highly choreographed set pieces underscore the unattainable physical and economic ideals found in hip-hop music videos and fashion magazines. Employing 3-D and stop-motion animation, it is a saturated aesthetic of multilayered references: music, cinema, art history and pop culture, in which nothing is inviolate, indigenous or sacred. Ultimately, Stereomongrel calls into question the superiority of high art along with the museums and curators that distinguish and elevate it, the value and necessity of protecting sub-cultural idioms, and the authenticity of the underground communities that perpetuate them. Stereomongrel was granted exceptional permission to film within the interior of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and subsequently premiered at the museum in September 2005. Luis Gispert (b.1972) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his Masters of Fine Art from Yale University in 2001. Gispert was included in the 2002 “Whitney Biennial,” and solo exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria (2003), Art Pace, San Antonio (2004) and most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art at Goldman Warehouse, North Miami, Florida (2009). |
Luis Gispert & Jeffrey Reed, Stereomongrel, 70mm film, 12 mins., 2005
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