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Candice Breitz
Through her pointed and deftly edited video installations, Candice Breitz looks at the stereotypes and visual conventions in film and popular culture. These videos often explore the relationship between the god-like presence of pop stars and actors, and their awestruck fans.
For her acclaimed two-part video installation Mother and Father (2005), Breitz extracted segments of mothers and fathers from Hollywood films such as Kramer vs Kramer, Mommie Dearest, and Postcards From the Edge. By isolating tiny episodes of dialogue, and presenting them as if there was a single narrative thread running through their performances, she transformed their behaviour into a chorus of parental breakdown. Breitz has also examined the status of pop stars in works such as Queen (A Portrait of Madonna) (2005), King (A Portrait of Michael Jackson) (2005) and Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley) (2005). In these works, Breitz gathered fans by posting advertisements in newspapers and fan websites, and then they were asked to sing their way through a key album. Shot in screen-test mode and presented as a choral grid over a wall of TV screens, these installations are both compelling and toe-curlingly difficult to watch, affectionate glimpses into the power structures inherent in mass media and its passionate consumers.
Candice Breitz was born in 1972 in Johannesburg, and currently lives and works in Berlin. She has participated in many major exhibitions including the Johannesburg, São Paulo, Istanbul, Kwangju, Taipei and Venice Biennales. She has had solo exhibitions at De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (2001), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004), Modern Art Oxford (2003); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2005) and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005).
More on Candice Breitz
| Artworks | |
 | II 4 Images |
 | III 4 Images |
 | IV 4 Images |
 | V 4 Images |
 | VI 4 Images |
 | VII 3 Images |
 | VIII 3 Images |
 | IX 4 Images |
 | Related Texts |
| CV | |
| Bibliography | |
| Candice Breitz: From A to B and Beyond by Jennifer Allen | |
| Exhibitions | |
| Factum 12 Feb—20 Mar 2010 | |
| New work 25 Jul—28 Aug 2007 | |
| Candice Breitz 7 Sep—8 Oct 2005 | |
| News | |
| Candice Breitz at the Kunsthaus Bregenz 6 Feb 2010 | |
 | Related Links |
| http://www.candicebreitz.net www.candicebreitz.net | |
| http://www.balticmill.com/w... Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead | |
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