January 2011 / In The Backspace: Double Feature
Curtis Erlinger
I'm shutting my eyes tight so everything goes black (detail), 2010
Ink on paper, snow, cloth overlay
8 x 10 inches
In The Backspace
Double Feature
Curtis Erlinger
January 05 – 29, 2011
Reception / Thursday, January 06, 6–8pm
Gallery Talk / Saturday, January 08, 2pm
Borrowing from an archive of cinematic still images, Erlinger generates paintings that evoke the stylized melodrama of film noir. Double Feature rephrases these images in ways that seem both furtive and strangely revealing. In deliberate contrast to a projection upon the silver screen, the viewer looks through an obscuring cloth to see the precision of the paintings. Individual images are presented, yet they become complicated by their interaction with one another. Although subtitled texts seem to offer an explanation, they are collaged and sourced from unrelated films. The original narratives are altered and made uncertain in order, paradoxically, to clarify the hidden truths about desire that lurk beneath them.