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BEC STUPAK: RADICAL EARTH MAGIC FLOWER |
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Written by Joe DiRosa
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BEC STUPAK
RADICAL EARTH MAGIC FLOWER
January 12 – February 25, 2005
76 Grand Street
Deitch Projects is pleased to present a new exhibition of video,
sculpture and performance by Bec Stupak. Couched in an exotic
harem-esque interior reminiscent of 1940’s B movies, her installation
uses video, sculpture, performance, elaborate set design, body paint,
and projected light to create a sense of euphoria.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is Bec's blind remake of Jack Smith’s
legendary film Flaming Creatures. Using members of her demimonde,
including performance drag group The Radical Fairies, Phiiliip, Agathe
Snow, and other downtown celebrities, she recreates the 1963 cult
classic based only on the impressions she’s collected from others of
what the film consists of. Where costume matters more than actor or
actress, anyone can get dressed up, loosened up, and sucked into this
world of bestial, mystical erotica.
Opposite Bec's blind remake will be screened the banned original Jack
Smith film, and flanking the intermediate walls will be video
slideshows of her storyboards, showing how she bridged the 42-year gap.
The original film, which has inspired artists from Andy Warhol to Susan
Sontag, features drag queens, mermaids, vampires, and other creatures
loping around cheaply alluring sets of pastiched old- hollywood
refuse. Bec’s approach of a blind remake was useful in removing
the “aura” from this classic work to explore the broad and complex
influence of the piece in the surrounding discourse. In this manner,
Bec examines how the piece has been reworked by memory, how it is
integrated into her friends’ personal experience. Her piece serves to
build a compilation of personal history as a way to pay homage to a
highly personal and subversive piece of art history.
As the illuminated palm reader-esque sign on the gallery façade might
indicate, Bec is well versed in the hokey theatrics, the sleight of
hand, and the song and dance that mystics often use to bring about
alternate states of consciousness. In accordance with that
objective, she has installed her exhibition in a way to dazzle and
entice, lead and mislead. Her tripartite trompe-l‘oeil passageway that
serves as the entrance to the main gallery: with the same Islamic-esque
archway constructions that once bedecked Jack Smith’s East Village
residence, Bec’s three video-filled passageways will be the first thing
to indicate that not all here is as it seems. Under the pursuing
gaze of lenticular signage, LED lights, and crisscrossing neon tape,
the exhibition’s terrain of video and sculpture morphs and expands,
explodes and vanishes.
This show explores the different uses of video today, comprised
in one artist’s work who has collaborated with many other artists
and performers: the central piece’s narrative style comprises one type
of cinema-style video art, while the dynamic and flexible VJ-style
video installation in the storefront room suggests another use
entirely. Bec learned how to use video to make people psyched on
the rigorous training ground of early-90’s raves. Her first art
audience was five thousand teens packed into the DC Armory, pupils the
size of dinner plates, wanting to see her visual synthesis of all they
were feeling and listening to. In this installation, the viewer will be
able to manipulate the different video tracks Bec has created to
experiment with the functionalities of VJing. Here in a gallery
setting, there are also provided opportunities for more architectural
uses of video. In various parts of the exhibition, Bec combines
sculptural elements, lighting elements and shaped video projections to
make hybrid display.
Bec Stupak is an artist living and working in New York City, and is
also the founding member of Honeygun Labs, an experimental video
project that after a few years blossomed into a collaborative effort
that at any given time had several people creating and experimenting
with different styles and techniques. In 2002 Honeygun Labs began
to create work with the NYC-based art collective Assume Vivid Astro
Focus. Their first project, Freebird, was an animation set to an
endless loop of the Freebird guitar solo and led to further
collaboration on Walking On Thin Ice, an un-official music video to
Yoko Ono's song of the same name presented at Deitch Projects and Peres
Projects in San Francisco.
In 2004, HGL collaborated again with AVAF to create a piece for the
Whitney Biennial (Garden 8) which featured the band Los Super Elegantes
and an LED lighting component to make the walls breathe and a
site-specific video piece that was created using live mixing
techniques. As an offshoot to the Whitney project, Bec started a DVD
zine called Scissorfriends, which was developed in the Eyebeam
artist-in-residence program and features everything from little dogs
dancing to cough-syrup induced music to a deranged lady exhibiting her
queefing skills. Her phenomenal video made in collaboration with
Phiiliip for his song, Elemental Childe was the standout piece in
Phiiliip’s Divided By Lightning show at Deitch and was definitively
radder than anything you might chance upon on MTV. Never to be
content with just one thing, Bec also plays guitar in the band, Saint
Eve, and hula- hoops with the precision hula-hoop troupe, Groovehoops.
www.honeygunlabs.com Video Sample
Deitch Projects
76 Wooster St. NYC
www.deitch.com
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