‘FRENZY’ by Claudia Bitran curated by Lauren Powell
SPRING/BREAK Art Show 2020, New York | March 3-9
Claudia Bitran is a multidisciplinary artist who works primarily in painting and video, most known for her Britney Spears impersonations and her ongoing shot-for-shot remake of Titanic. Her work stands somewhere between critique and devotional act, exploring the contradictory and seductive powers of capitalism by engaging and complicating the smooth transmission of its signs.
Compelled by the vast amount of viral videos of inebriated teenagers circulating online, Bitran started collecting and cataloging clips in an effort to break down and examine the paradoxical way in which we consume them. How do violence and near death experiences transform into humor for the masses? Why are we drawn to this kind of entertainment?
Bitran’s Fallen stop-motion painting animations depict anonymous female teenagers in euphoric and anxiety-inducing states of inebriation. The compositions, gestures, and pacing of the paintings emphasize the instability of the characters as they lose control over their vomiting, falling bodies. The stills are layered over each previous iteration producing a final painting where the trauma of the actions in the animations is covered, yet still present.
In Frenzy, Bitran further explores the tipping point between euphoria and near death experiences. By painting each frame of these found videos, she is expanding time and analyzing each microsecond of the actions. The artist employs a wide range of painting strategies that both glorify and petrify the vulgarity of the actions, resulting in surfaces that are affected, thick and loaded with the poses of the young disoriented bodies. The final paintings are a ghostly metamorphosis of the source material, while the animations serve as documentation of the painting’s evolving stages. The process is both empathetic, and at the same time pulls back the curtain to reveal the invisible horror behind the subject matter.
As viewers experience these entertaining, disturbing, plastic, euphoric and dark animations, we hope they raise questions about the nature of our voracious habits online. The TVs stand as purgatory cages in which the anonymous characters are trapped on an infinite loop, constantly devoured over and over again. The tense disconnect between the viral videos and the viewers reinforces the numbness of our consumption, and the teenage fall acts as metaphor for the constant failure of neo-liberal systems of exchange. Will the aftermath of showing these painting animations reinforce this sharing cycle?
Bitran’s Spring Break solo booth, open to the Public between March 4th and 9th, is a sequel to her video-animation works that are on display at Postmasters Gallery until March 7th, 2020. Both shows are curated by Lauren Powell, independent curator and art advisor.
For inquiries, Available work, or more information please contact lauren@artofthis.world
