Elba Benítez Gallery Showcases Celebrated Moviemaker Chantal Akerman’s Maniac Shadows

Elba Benítez Gallery is pleased to announce Maniac Shadows, an individual project by famous moviemaker Chantal Akerman (Brussels 1950; who lives and works in Paris). This is the second show carried out by the artist at the gallery and is going to be held from June 24 to July 26, 2014.

 
Maniac Shadows (2013) represents a kaleidoscopic multichannel installation that plays with the relation between present and absent, by lyrically examining such matters as family relationships, the concept of home and women’s place in the society. The display includes a triple screening made up of a group of shots taken in the countries where Akerman has lived, as well as a collection of 100 pictures from Maniac Summer #2 series and a video in which the artist reads a summary of her autobiographical text My Mother Laughs.

 
One of the most outstanding moviemakers of her generation, Chantal Akerman became a leading figure in terms of European experimental cinema with her first movies and, in the early 1990s, she used both installation and video to explore the filming world. The artist’s most recent retrospective, Too Far, Too Close, was exhibited at Amberes’ MUHKA in 2012. There was another remarkable retrospective in the United States in 2008, entitled Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space, which also visited MIT List Visual Arts Center in Massachusetts, Miami Art Museum, Contemporary Museum of Art in St. Louis, Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston and Contemporary Jewsih Museum in San Francisco. Chantal Akerman, was the exhaustive solo show organized by Georges Pompidou Center in 2003. Other solo shows have been showcased in such institutions as London’s Camden Arts Center (2008), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2006), Princeton University Art Museum (2006), MALBA in Buenos Aires (2005) and L’École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse (2004).

Likewise, Akerman’s work has been included in collective exhibits like the 29^th São Paulo Biennale (2010), 11^th Kassel Documenta (2002) and 49^th Venice Biennale (2001), as well as several international movie festivals.

Source: Elba Benítez Gallery