For her first solo exhibition Cammisa Buerhaus premieres three video works: PRIVATE LIVES and PERFORMANCE BY APPOINTMENT (2016), both performances for video camera, and STATUS SYMBOLS (2011), an early film made in collaboration with Sarina Dailey.
PRIVATE LIVES (2016) is a hallucinatory film that explores the hyper-real life of the Clintons, their mythic proportions and amorphous, shape shifting tendencies. Buerhaus’ mimetic obsession with the political protagonists presents their monstrosity and refuses to propose an alternative. Instead her work commits to zoom into the darkness and the shadows of impossibility that the political characters represent. The film moves from the private correspondences of Hillary Clinton to the political legacy of William Jefferson Clinton, supported by an all star cast, including Monica Lewinsky, Jon Benet Ramsey, Debbie Harry, and Justin Trudeau. Through the refractory lens of popular entertainment television programs like E True Hollywood Story and Entertainment Tonight, Buerhaus gives us lives – not lived – but putrefied.
In PERFORMANCE BY APPOINTMENT (2016), an art dealer converts from a hyperbolic sales pitch to a psychotic personal monologue. When the art dealer is exposed as a ghost and goes home, her atonal piano melody remains, saturating the space between her and the sculptures that surround her. Initially made as a performance for video, presented at Moiety in collaboration with Lia Lowenthal’s sculptures the work is now presented as a film.
Opening on November 25th, 9pm. From 11pm dinner will follow accompanied by two concerts by Andie Springer & James Moore. David Zuckerman will read excerpts from a new monologue.
The exhibition will be on view until December 9th, 5pm. Opening hours: Thursday to Saturday 11-5pm and by appointment.
