MARIANNA ROTHEN – SHADOWS IN PARADISE
2017-02-20The show features over 20 large scale prints from Rothen’s latest series Shadows in Paradise and a two-channel video installation The Woman with The Crown. The exhibition launches the artist’s second monograph, Shadows in Paradise, published by b.frank books, Zurich. This exhibition is curated by Gallery Director Cassandra Johnson.
The two-channel short film The Woman with a Crown is on view for the first time. The video is based on Princess Diana’s 1995 televised interview in which Diana candidly and heartbreakingly describes the end of her marriage and her denigration by the royal family. Watching this fairytale gone wrong, the audience slowly realizes that Rothen is playing four characters all speaking Diana’s words. There is a blonde sex worker from Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, a sullen woman based on Frances Farmer, a pimple-faced farm worker, and Diana herself. The emotionally draining video is at once a family tragedy, an actorly tour de force, and a complex meditation on femininity.
The characters of Shadows in Paradise are portrayed by Rothen herself and by her models/muses/friends. The photographs were made in Rothen’s home in upstate New York, shot both in 2015 when the house was in a decrepit, nearly abandoned state, and then in the summer of 2016 after obsessive renovations.
Opposite – Shadows in Paradise (from the series Shadows in Paradise), 2015
Exhibition runs through to April 15th, 2017
Steven Kasher Gallery
521 West 23rd Street
New York
NY 10011
