I had seen Sue de Beer's work years ago - at the Armory- I think. It was one of her special effects photographs of body splicing horror (the first image on the last line shown above, I believe). That is mainly what I knew of her: special effects, bodily horror. I was impressed with her special effect skills. I was rightfully repulsed and intrigued with her work all at the same time. I most definitely didn't view her work beyond that initial shock though. I didn't know about other parts of her work like youth culture/angst and she has more of a relationship with popular cinema in general than I realized.
This is the point of me doing this blog in the first place....to look a little more at an artist than I had before. And in doing this with Sue de Beer's work, I have found much more than I did in the precursory viewing. In particular, I found an excellent article by Randy Kennedy from the New York Times. It is from January 26, 2011 and covers Sue de Beer with her then upcoming film "The Ghosts" which was to be playing at the Park Avenue Armory. I'm sorry I missed the film!
The article mentions that de Beer was originally grouped as Neo-Gothic (post 9/11 NYC group)- along with Banks Violette and David Altmejd. In looking at her work, I'm not sure if I completely agree with that categorization. Her work is full of teen angst and references to popular cinema (other than horror cinema) that make me think of her work as a psychological and sociological study instead of being specifically Neo-Gothic. The gothic elements could be the bloody darkness that is sometimes present and the teen goths in some of the work... but that still doesn't seem to be the dominant force.
Oh! And there is a quote from the NYtimes article I truly like:
"Over the last decade Ms. de Beer has built a cult following for the dark and often disturbing ways that she mixes the profane and the sacred - or at least a postmodern version of the sacred, a longing to escape the confines of ordinary consciousness for something perhaps more beautiful or true."
First of all, the quote 'postmodern version of the sacred' is very interesting....I want to look more into that idea. What are examples of the postmodern sacred? What is sacred in de Beer's work? I wonder if it is popular cinema... As for 'the longing to escape the confines of ordinary consciousness for something more beautiful or true' -- that is the epitome of teen angst. That actually is probably the epitome of most people's angst in life - regardless of age.
In this last year, I saw some of Sue de Beer's recent work at Marianne Boesky (last image shown here). This work seemed very different, way more theoretical and abstract, instead of her usual focus on Horror, Youth and film. It didn't have the narrative element found in her other work. Although I haven't read about it, it seemed to be about film viewing in an abstracted and empirical way. I did like these objects: these flat, perforated, decorated in pattern lighting screens. I enjoyed how the the light fell through them. I enjoyed them as objects...but I was not drawn into whatever concept she was developing. It seemed too dry and cold to me- a fully cerebral act.
