Woman on the Run at the 21c Museum
Tracey Snelling's Woman on the Run exhibition is currently on display at the 21c Museum Hotel, transforming the Street Level Gallery into another time and place. Focusing on that film noir staple-the femme fatale, the installation employs miniature recreations of urban decay and downtrodden malaise to highlight the plight of the independent woman in peril.
- (1888PressRelease) October 25, 2010 - LOUSIVILLE, KY - Tracey Snelling's Woman on the Run exhibition is currently on display at the 21c Museum Hotel. The installation transforms the Street Level Gallery into another time and place by intricately mixing architecture, scale modeling, video, photography and 3-D storytelling with a heady dose of Hollywood glamour and Hitchcock-like built-in suspense. Through manipulation of scale and perception, this cutting-edge installation employs miniature recreations of urban decay and downtrodden malaise to highlight the plight of the independent woman in peril. Focusing on that film noir staple-the femme fatale-Woman on the Run straddles two realities, today's and yesteryear's.
Snelling channels the mystery of the 1950's B movie heroine in her models by shrinking skid row motels and barrio haunts, casting a keen, scathing eye on the cold, uncaring city, infusing a taut paranoia that is pervasive. Using video set against the dilapidated scenery of peeling wallpaper in rundown rooms, different scenes with the woman come into view, forcing the viewer to ask questions: who is she? What has she done? Is she hero or villainess? And most importantly perhaps, why is she running?
Woman on the Run encourages audience participation and interaction by prompting these questions. The power and poetry of Snelling's work is in its to-scale details: the telephone wires dissecting the city, neon signs replicated, leaving that woman, alone with her secrets, in a room with its walls closing in. All the senses are utilized-voices are heard on the phone, lonely country music plays, and the smell of a musty motel waifs from the room. This is Snelling's world. And for those witnessing it, it fast becomes their world too.
Initially commissioned by Selfridges, Woman on the Run was shown at the Oxford Street location in London during Frieze 2008, before being brought to the U.S., where it was shown in the non-profit art space Smack-Mellon in Brooklyn's DUMBO district in 2009. After 21c, Woman on the Run will be showing in September 2011, through February 2012, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN, and later at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem in March through May 2012.
Following this, Woman on the Run plans to continue traveling throughout the U.S., and abroad.
For the first time with the Woman on the Run exhibit, Snelling has created a full color comic book to accompany the installation. The comic book, in limited edition, is available through 21c Museum or by contacting Woman on the Run.
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21c Museum is North America's first museum dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art of the 21st century. 21c Museum will host a series of dynamic group and solo exhibitions featuring emerging artists alongside acclaimed international artists, such as video artists Bill Viola and Tony Oursler, photographers Andres Serrano, Sam Taylor Wood, and David Leventhal, sculptors Yinka Shonibare and Judy Fox, and multimedia artists Chuck Close, Alfredo Jaar, and Kara Walker.
Tracey Snelling lives in Oakland, CA. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Gemeentemuseum Helmond in the Netherlands, Kunstmuseen Krefeld in Germany, with solo exhibitions in Brussels, Amsterdam, London, Miami, and Beijing. In 2010, Snelling was invited to exhibit a sculptural/video installation at the Sundance Film Festival. She is currently preparing for a ten-year retrospective exhibition at the Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco.
www.traceysnelling.com
Previous and present sponsors of Woman on the Run include Selfridges, Smack Mellon, 21c Museum, the San Pablo Arts District Fund, Eammune, Galerie Urs Meile, Osborne Samuel Gallery, Aeroplastics Contemporary, and Pan American Art Projects.
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