Breakdown
Alexandra Bircken, Talia Chetrit, Martine Syms, Kaari Upson

Through the works of four artists, Break­down con­sid­ers the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, trans­for­ma­tions, and com­plex­i­ties that emerge from moments of dis­in­te­gra­tion and reconstruction.

Alexan­dra Bir­ck­en trained as a fash­ion design­er at Cen­tral St Mar­tins Col­lege of Art and Design in Lon­don, which is appar­ent in her appre­ci­a­tion of the tac­tile qual­i­ties of mate­ri­als. This expe­ri­ence under­pins not only her inter­est in the use of tex­tile mate­ri­als, dis­card­ed items of cloth­ing and tech­niques of weav­ing, knit­ting and cro­chet, but also her inter­est in the human form and her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with dress­ing the space.

In 2 Cir­cles (2020) Alexan­dra Bir­ck­en dis­lo­cat­ed the frame of a push­bike from its wheels, han­dle­bars and machin­ery. Dis­tend­ed and abstract­ed, it becomes a sort of hiero­glyph­ic wall draw­ing. Unhinged, it begins to look almost skele­tal, brachial, spatch­cocked. Bir­ck­en inter­rupts move­ment, turn­ing func­tion to dysfunction. 

In Mindmap (2020) Bir­ck­en plays with the mate­r­i­al of our pro­tec­tive forms, either exag­ger­at­ing our desire for solid­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty to the point where an object becomes unus­able – like a pair of hock­ey gloves cast in bronze – or betray­ing its fun­da­men­tal fragili­ty, like a hel­met stitched loose­ly of thread. With fibrous veins and arter­ies, it becomes almost unrecog­nis­able as a hel­met, reveal­ing the cra­nial form it is sup­posed to protect.

In Talia Chetrit’s por­traits of domes­tic life, the cast of char­ac­ters includes her­self, her boyfriend, their child, cat, and a selec­tion of props that inter­min­gle with the quo­tid­i­an rou­tines of child rear­ing and the home. In Unti­tled, (Fam­i­ly #1), 2021, her boyfriend, dressed in women’s design­er clothes, feeds their child with­out break­ing his pierc­ing gaze. Despite the pre­tense of self-expo­sure in these and so many of Chetrit’s images, few of her works dis­close much about the actu­al struc­ture of her life, the nature of her habits, or her inter­nal sense of self.

The pow­er of Chetrit’s lat­est images hinges on an odd ambiva­lence between their banal set­tings and the pre­sen­ta­tions adopt­ed by the adults with­in them. The char­ac­ters’ gen­der con­trivances and charms shift cir­cum­stance to cir­cum­stance and image to image, adding intrigue to the trap­pings of a mid­dle-class life that serve as back­ground. The posed pos­tures and direct stares assumed by Chetrit and her boyfriend are less clues to their inner natures and more reg­u­lar reminders of the camera’s pres­ence, as well as the per­son behind it. These images rev­el in the fact that they are con­struc­tions, and as such they beg the ques­tion: who’s call­ing the shots in this dra­ma? We imag­ine con­ver­sa­tions about cloth­ing, props, chore­og­ra­phy, light­ing, and set­ting, and the dia­logue about what is pre­sentable when first look­ing at the film. These works present a new set of nego­ti­a­tions between pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cam­era, and subject.

Med­i­ta­tion (2021) is from Mar­tine Syms’ Cita’s World series. Kita enacts the per­for­mances of every­day life in a hyper-dig­i­tized world. The character’s roles range from med­i­ta­tion guru to cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tor, and she speaks direct­ly to ques­tions of con­scious­ness with­in the sys­tems of labor, race, tech­nol­o­gy, and insti­tu­tion­al fail­ure. To the cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance of Siri mis­hear­ing her speech, to the ter­ror of (mis)representation, to the instinct to recon­nect with nature. In these video works, Syms cre­ates an envi­ron­ment in which being human is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the impact and inter­rup­tions of tech­no­log­i­cal innovation.

“The work-cum-med­i­ta­tion guide fea­tures a famil­iar back­drop of sooth­ing nat­ur­al vignettes, such as aer­i­al views of moun­tains. But its ordi­nar­i­ness is off­set by the dig­i­tal char­ac­ter Kita. Based on the fig­ure from the Black Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion (BET) series Cita’s World, Kita asks us to ​“stay here and just observe.” As the work goes on, the dig­i­tal med­i­ta­tion guide – hack­neyed in our over­wired and oper­a­tional­ized lives – per­verts into a charged ques­tion of pres­ence. What could be more jar­ring than a vir­tu­al char­ac­ter demand­ing that we imag­ine our­selves as a three-dimen­sion­al object? How, indeed, are we present?” – Adela Kim, ​“Are We Ded?”, Text zer Kunst

Kaari Upson’s bust sculp­tures stand as reminders of how slip­page and mir­ror­ing pre­vail in the brand of matri­archy that defines the artist’s world. Upson attempt­ed to sculpt her mother’s face from mem­o­ry and extend­ed the series through sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of famil­ial women. Each is cast, enlarged, and thick­ly paint­ed by Upson to reflect the face of her moth­er, grand­moth­er, or self, or that of her friend, friend’s moth­er, or grand­moth­er — their faces are then pressed into each oth­er so that the paint smudges and melds, pre­sent­ing ambigu­ous, unre­li­able por­traits, each a mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of the ​“her” that weaves through the artist’s prac­tice at large.

Upson’s work con­sid­ers the over­laps, fis­sures and dis­junc­tions between our inte­ri­or worlds and exte­ri­or real­i­ty, not just con­cep­tu­al­ly, but also through her embod­ied process of cast­ing, ​“skin­ning” and invert­ing objects. Embrac­ing qua­si-archae­o­log­i­cal, foren­sic strate­gies, the artist cre­at­ed uncan­ny, lay­ered sce­nar­ios with the pow­er to sur­face repressed desires and mem­o­ries — both per­son­al and col­lec­tive — with unex­pect­ed force. Her work evokes rad­i­cal­ly desta­bi­lized sub­jects and presents a crit­i­cal por­trait of late-cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­can cul­ture with its many fetish­es, obses­sions, neu­roses and repressed fantasies.