Carissa Rodriguez
Imitation of Life
May 4 – August 18, 2024
Opening: Friday, May 3, 7–10pm
With Imitation of Life, Kunstverein München presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Europe by Carissa Rodriguez. The exhibition centers on a new video work created during the first year in the life of the artist’s first child and opens soon after the baby turns one. The production timeline for the artist coincides with the period known as ‘primary maternal preoccupation’—a mindset of psychic interdependence between mother and child.
The durational video work enacts ‘reverie’—the experience of being lost in thought. Filmed exclusively during the hour between 6am to 7am, or the break of dawn, it is not the sunrise that is recorded, but its reflection in the phallic mirror: a nearby skyscraper seen from the window of the baby’s room in the artist’s apartment. By framing a natural occurrence (sunrise), a landscape (Manhattan skyline), a chosen hour (before the workday begins), and an intrapsychic state (‘matrescence’), the video occupies a liminal space between interior and exterior, conscious and unconscious and embodies the inherent contradiction between daydreaming and productive labor. In this framework, ‘free time’ is rendered paradoxical through the artist’s effort to translate life into art. Modes of reflexivity and ‘mirroring’ (mental, physical, metaphorical) run throughout Rodriguez’s exhibition while the reveries engage the often-conflicting temporal demands of exhibition-making and caregiving. Drone cinematography, ubiquitous in modern warfare, is tested as a medium to convey tenderness and intimacy.
Imitation of Life also features two off-site projects in the vicinity of the Kunstverein München. Following previous solo projects, namely The Maid (2018) and La Collectionneuse (2013), Rodriguez once again works in sets of three. In her Munich exhibition, the artist connects three distinct institutions of self-cultivation: the museum, the school, and the cinema.
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PROGRAM OF EVENTS
Saturday, May 4, 4pm
Artist Talk with Carissa Rodriguez
Sunday, May 12, 6pm
Film program: “Imitation of Life” (1959) by Douglas Sirk
Screening at Theatiner Filmkunst
Sunday, June 23, 11am
Film program: “Imitation of Life” (1959) by Douglas Sirk
Screening at Theatiner Filmkunst
Image: Carissa Rodriguez, New York City, 2024
In cooperation with the One Million Years Foundation and Theatiner Filmkunst.
The exhibition is supported by Stiftung Stark für Gegenwartskunst and the Biehler-von Dorrer Stiftung, as well as Eleanor Heyman Propp; Jacob King / Fine Art Concepts, LLC; James Cahn and Jeremiah Collatz; Michael Capio; and Karma International, Zurich.