Inconsolable Memories at the Studio Museum
With a
n international reputation for his photographs and film and video installations, Canadian artist Stan Douglas represented by David Zwirner uses innovative techniques to blur the boundaries between visual art, cinema, and television. For its presentation at The Studio Museum in Harlem, this exhibition consists of film work and a series of photographs inspired by his recent trips to Cuba.
The film work, Inconsolable Memories, presented at the 2005 Venice Biennale, is a tribute to the 1968 Cuban cinematic masterpiece Memories of Underdevelopment, directed by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Alea’s film portrayed the alienation of a character named Sergio, a bourgeois intellectual swept up in the changing social climate of Cuba following the Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis of 1962. Douglas’ film transports Sergio to 1980 and the Mariel Boatlift, when Fidel Castro allowed thousands of Cubans to escape the island on a procession of boats arriving from Florida. Through Douglas’ use of two 16mm loops projected simultaneously onto one screen, past and present overlap. The photographs, shot over the past two years, describe Havana’s recycled urban architecture: villas are now schools; banks are now motorcycle lots. Immaculate and technically flawless, the prints are in stark contrast to the ruin and entropy they describe.
Stan Douglas, Inconsolable Memories
Studio Museum in Harlem
144 West 125th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Blvd.
212-864-4500
November 15, 2006 – March 18, 2007
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