ERROR:
subscribe to style file blog via RSSnot another teen movie
October 17, 2007 9:51 am
Ever since her 2002 Armory Show debut (a sexually frank video she made and showed while still an undergraduate at NYU) Alex McQuilkin has delved deeply into the crash-and-burn intensity of youthful emotions. The 27-year-old Brooklyn artist’s latest video, “Joan of Arc” (above), which will be shown at the Marvelli Gallery in New York beginning tomorrow, presents her as that ultimate symbol of adolescent anguish and persecution. Inspired by Maria Falconetti’s portrayal of the Maid of Orleans in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 film “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” McQuilkin shaves her head and has the camera close in on her beautifully tormented visage as she emotes pure ideological and spiritual suffering. At the same time, the bisected screen shows her sulking in a cute top, her strawberry blond hair falling in waves over her shoulders (it’s a bit like watching a before-and-after Britney). Together, the two images offer a telling portrait of how teenagers see themselves (persecuted) vis-à-vis the general adult view of them (privileged and spoiled). In retrospect, most adults are happy that the overheated feelings of their high school years faded away before burning them out. But McQuilkin, who is actually sunny-natured, does us a service by resurrecting them, even if those who are self-satisfied with their “maturity” might dismiss her theatrics as unseemly. As she’s explained, “I am taking a universal thing and going over the top with it—to embarrass myself and embarrass the viewer by putting it all right up front.” For more information, see www.marvelligallery.com.
tags:
