"Theater feels like a loopy, parabolic silent-era dramedy, albeit with a breezy, lo-fi flair. When Kennedy falls for an actress presented by a patron, the two are caught in an endless loop of role-playing-or are they lying to themselves? And, here, what's the difference? Such questions drive the film. With Kennedy's bed placed above the set, romance upstages art, yet it also makes her dream of art so enmeshed with life, it renders the stage irrelevant."
"Situated in a residential building, the gallery has a homey vibe that proved fitting-the main theme of Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's durational 16-mm film Theater (2024) was the blur between professional and private space."
"Bethan Hughes's Outfit for a Woman in a Field, 2022, is a pair of hand-cast rubber boots on metal rods. I was drawn to their sooty, grim presence, their defiance of workable wear posed so idly, upside down."
Berlin's February gallery scene presents works examining the intersection of personal and professional life. At Isabella Bortolozzi, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's 16-mm film Theater features filmmaker Leilah Weinraub as Kennedy, a stage director who moves into her theater due to financial constraints. The film explores how romance and personal relationships blur with artistic practice, rendering traditional distinctions between stage and life irrelevant. At Tanja Wagner, a group exhibition featuring exclusively women artists includes diverse media from sculpture to sound works. Bethan Hughes's rubber boots installation references historical labor, particularly women's forced wartime work harvesting Russian dandelions for rubber production, connecting personal and collective histories.
#contemporary-art #berlin-galleries #experimental-film #professional-private-boundaries #women-artists
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