REMAI MODERN ANNOUNCES NEW WEB COMMISSION BY LYNNE MARSH
Saskatoon, Canada — Remai Modern is very pleased to announce its newest web commission, Taking Positions, by Lynne Marsh. The project will be featured on the museum’s website from June 1-30. Remai Modern web commissions are curated by Gregory Burke, Executive Director & CEO, and Sandra Guimarães, Director of Programs & Chief Curator.
Taking Positions is a performance-for-screen that was recorded in the empty gallery space of Kunsthaus Dahlem in Berlin. Originally the State Studio of Arno Breker, an “official state sculptor” of the Third Reich, the building was recently transformed into a gallery for postwar German Modernism. In the lead-up to its opening in 2015, Lynne Marsh invited six female performers to embody the postures of Breker’s mannered statues of women, made between 1938 and 1944.
Marsh worked with figure groupings and camera positions premised pictorially on exhibition documentation and photographs of the human figure in sculpture from this period. Narrative symbolism, scale, movement and the relation between modernity and classicism are played out through the aesthetics of gesture, architecture and frame on the screen-as-stage. Taking Positions continues Marsh’s exploration of how the body is directed in space and how the camera participates in the production of power and spectacle.
“We are excited to present this compelling new web commission by Lynne Marsh,” said Burke. “Her work perceptively explores the psychology of the body as it relates to architecture and the camera, and the socio-political underpinnings expressed therein.”
“A captivating aspect of Lynne Marsh’s work is how it deals with time,” said Guimarães. “The spaces, the styles, and the gestures—they give a sense of the past, present and future layering, or even collapsing. The Kunsthaus Dahlem serves as a powerful location for Marsh’s latest video, as its unique history speaks to cultural echoing and the ways in which art can both serve and resist authority.”
About Lynne Marsh
Lynne Marsh is a Canadian artist based in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented by Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2017); Opera North, Leeds (2016); fig-2 at Institute for Contemporary Art, London (2015); Scrap Metal, in association with Toronto International Film Festival (2014); and Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2008). Her work has also been featured at La Biennale de Montréal (2014); The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2012); 53 Art Museum, Guangzhou, China (2011); Manif d’art – The Québec City Biennial (2010); and the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007). Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queens University; and Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. Marsh is represented by Tintype Gallery, London.
About Remai Modern web commissions
In association with its pre-launch programs, Remai Modern is inviting artists to realize original projects exclusively for online viewing. On the first day of every month, work by a new artist appears on Remai Modern’s homepage. Previous commissions by Ryan Gander, Tammi Campbell, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Thomas Hirschhorn, Taysir Batniji, Pedro Barateiro, Kara Uzelman, Rosa Barba, Amanda Beech, Ellen Moffat, and Duane Linklater remain accessible in the online archive. Through these commissions, the museum considers its website as an extension of its physical space and onsite program. Mobile and experimental, this online gallery allows for direct, personal encounters with art while connecting artists and audiences across the globe.
About Remai Modern
Remai Modern is a new museum of modern and contemporary art coming to life in Saskatoon, a growing city on the vast Canadian Prairies. Opening in 2017, it aims to be a vibrant, imaginative and prescient museum committed to affirming the powerful role that art and artists play in questioning, interpreting and defining the modern era. The building, by eminent Canadian architects KPMB, overlooks the South Saskatchewan River in downtown Saskatoon. Remai Modern is home to the world’s foremost collection of Picasso linocut prints, and aspires to be a leading centre for contemporary Indigenous art programming.