STEFANA MCCLURE SOLO EXHIBITION BARTHA CONTEMPORARY LONDON SPRING 2013
STEFANA MCCLURE Science is FICTION EXHIBITION: MARCH 28 – MAY 11, 2013 Bartha Contemporary is delighted to announce Stefana McClure’s (b. 1959, UK / USA) upcoming exhibition ‘Science is FICTION’ featuring a monumental ‘films on paper’ suite in twenty-three parts, science fiction in the form of a series of manga drawings and some new large scale colour-blind works articulating the world of pure science. Please join us for the private view on Thursday March 28th from 6PM – 9PM. Exhibition on view until May 11th 2013. Before Attenborough and Cousteau there was Painlevé. The artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery celebrates the wonderful underwater documentaries of this early twentieth century French marine biologist and cinematic pioneer. In McClure’s suite of ‘Science is FICTION’ drawings the subtitles to twenty-three of his magical films are superimposed, concentrated and concealed in two shimmering bands at the bottom of otherwise uninterrupted monochromatic fields. Letters, in their original typeface and screen placement, are relentlessly accumulated and stacked upon themselves, coalescing in a super-condensed version of each film’s dialogue. These abstractions, characterised by the distillation of time and the obliteration and reconstruction of information, are tangible manifestations of film. Alongside this expansive work, a second suite of nine drawings further showcases the artist’s predilection for seriality. Entitled ‘Hinotori’ this suite of drawings on wax transfer paper mounted on dibond, is a distillation of the nine-volume manga epic by the inimitable Osamu Tezuka who worked on the series for over 35 years and considered it to be his life’s work. Arguably one of the finest works of Japanese comic art ever produced, this is science fiction at its best. Twelve separate stories, linked by the presence of the mythical hinotori, or bird of fire, jump across time, alternating between a distant future and a distant past, ultimately converging on the present. These manga drawings relate strongly to the films on paper, concentrating the dialogue of entire comic books into single drawings, each new layer of text covering, but not quite obliterating the one that went before it. While the films of Jean Painlevé exist on the border of sci-fi and nature documentary and Hinotori is sheer science fiction, the new colour-blind drawings, based on early twentieth century Japanese tests designed for the detection of colour vision deficiencies, double up as effective diagnostic tools and embody the realm of pure science. Much of the colour information has been carefully removed from these intense multi-layered works, which have been riddled with thousands of holes. Recent sculptural objects will complete the installation. Stefana McClure lives and works in New York. She has previously lived and worked in Japan for many years and is a native of Northern-Ireland. Her work has been exhibited widely and forms part of numerous international private and public collections. Newburgh Studio, 2012
Science is fictioni : 23 Films by Jean Painlevé Celebrating the wonderful underwater documentaries of the early twentieth century French marine biologist and cinematic pioneer, Jean Painlevé, the selection includes sixteen of his “popular” films; two of his science research films; four science films he produced but did not direct; and the 1938 color animation Bluebeard, which he produced. Son of mathematician and sometime French Prime Minister, Paul Painlevé, Jean Painlevé was a precocious scientific polymath and keen cinematic experimenter. Drawn to surrealism and dadaism, he crossed professional paths with Man Ray, Guillaume Apollinaire and Georges Franju, and supposedly served as ant wrangler on Un Chien Andalou. A friend of Artaud, Vigo, Eisenstein and later the French New Wave, his artistic and scientific passions merged in his pioneering development of underwater cameras, slow- and fast-motion photography and microscopic lenses – developments that allowed the creation of the aquatic nature shorts that are probably the best-known of his 200-odd films. Throughout his career, Painlevé showed an acute interest in reproductive behavior that runs counter to the conventional expectations of human society. A compelling sequence in The Sea Horse (1933), shows the male of the species, in accordance with its unusual breeding behavior, giving birth to hundreds of hatchlings, while Sea Ballerinas (1956), which is about starfish, How Some Jellyfish Are Born (1960) and The Love Life of the Octopus (1967) throw all kinds of spanners in the works of expected gender definitions and sexual behavior. Even more beguiling are the subjects of Acera, or The Witches’ Dance (1972), – tiny little sea-snails whose slimy bodies are captured, in intense close-up, writhing in sinuous dancing motions and propelling themselves through the water with the help of a fan sprouting from their bodies like a jellyfish’s carapace or a tutu. Their mating takes a particular wild-card quality from the fact that each snail is both male and female and can engage in sex in both roles simultaneously. From the start, Painlevé incorporated humor into his work—both wry, understated narrative comments (“Shrimping is the most beautiful and most enviable of sports”) and absurd sight gags and jokes (a crustacean “conductor” directing with its antennae a dancing feather star). He was also fond of making analogies between his underwater subjects and examples from the everyday life of his audience. Most frequent was his use of anthropomorphizing: almost everything he saw had some human parallel, from the “labor pains” of the male seahorse, to the courtship rituals of the octopus, to the “vanity” of the hyas. But the two related aspects of his films, which continue to give them a power and fascination today, are their strong basis in science and their sheer beauty. Painlevé was a true poet of the documentary and these truly magical explorations literally have to be seen to be believed.
Science is FICTION Subtitles to 23 Films by Jean Painlevé, 2012-13 Wax transfer paper mounted on rag Each 27.8 x 32 cm (incl. mat)
Little Prince (Italian), 2013 Cut paper Circumference 29 cm
Little Prince (German), 2013 Cut paper Circumference 33.5 cm
Hinotori Hinotori, a suite of nine drawings on wax transfer paper mounted on dibond, is a distillation of the nine-volume manga epic by the inimitable Osamu Tezuka who worked on the series for over 35 years and considered it to be his life’s work. It is perhaps one of the finest works of Japanese comic art ever produced. Twelve separate stories, linked by the presence of the mythical hinotori, or bird of fire, jump across time, alternating between a distant future and a distant past, ultimately converging on the present. The epic tale is of birth, rebirth, love, revenge and redemption with characters from one story often reincarnated in another. All of the plots involve the quest for immortality and Tezuka was said to have been moved to create the series after listening to the music of Igor Stravinsky. The scope of the work is truly amazing: Future, the second volume in the series, is a rollicking space-age adventure, an apocalyptic cautionary tale, a fable of human frailty and triumph and a fantastic voyage through time, space and the macroverse, while Yamato, the third volume, is a bloody Shakespearean morality play where betrayal heaps upon betrayal. These manga drawings relate strongly to the films on paper, concentrating the dialogue of entire comic books into single drawings, each new layer of text covering, but not quite obliterating the one that went before it.
Hinotori 1-9 Dialogue to manga by Osamu Tezuka, 2011-12 Wax transfer paper mounted on dibond 25.5 x 36.3 cm Courtesy: Christoph Seibt Collection Contemporary Art
Colourblind Drawing (Ed), 2013 Archival ink on holepunched Paper 61 x 61 cm
Colourblind Drawing (Eli), 2013 Archival ink on holepunched Paper 61 x 61 cm
Fitzcarraldo English subtitles to a film by Werner Herzog, 2012 Wax transfer paper mounted on dibond 102.2 x 155.6 cm
The End of The World Final issue of the News of the Wold Newspaper, 2012 Cut paper Circumference 39.5 cm
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