Kristin Oppenheim: Bang Bang
303 Gallery, New York
January 14 – February 19, 2022
303 Gallery presents its fifth solo exhibition by KRISTIN OPPENHEIM, featuring the premiere of her new installation, Bang Bang.
The artist draws inspiration from the eponymous Nancy Sinatra song, in which a woman laments her lover’s abandonment and recalls a childhood game. Reimagining the song’s narrative, in Kristin Oppenheim’s refrain, “I shot you down / you hit the ground”, the female narrator is both the shooter and a celebratory survivor. The “La La” lyrics are woven into the narrative like a braid, referencing the narrator’s satisfactory revenge. Complexly layered in the artist’s signature style, Bang Bang is full of motion – the flashing lights of the film were edited and composed along with the soundtrack, to tie together the experience of movement and sound within the gallery space.
Comprised of a melodic vocal recording and film that evoke the strange sublimity of losing consciousness, this immersive installation blurs the lines between memory, reality and abstraction. The flashing light clip, used to create the motion of the film, represents the psychological experience of hitting one’s head and seeing stars. The circumambient environment of the work is both physically and emotionally evocative, as Kristin Oppenheim captures the sereneness of immobility, and the desperation to return.
303 GALLERY
555 W 21 Street, New York, NY 10011
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