Artist Post #9: Sue de Beer

Gina V. d'Orio (Forest), 2006
C-print
29 1/2 x 40 inches
Gina V. d'Orio (Cabin), 2006
C-print
40 x 29 1/2 inches
Still from Black Sun, House, 2004-2005
C-print mounted on aluminum
30 x 40 inches
Still from Black Sun, Lena Herrgesell (reading magazine), 2004-2005
C-print mounted on aluminum
40 x 30 inches

all pictures from Marianne Bolesky Gallery's website

Sue de Beer

"Sue de Beer is an artist who uses video, installation, photography and sculpture to explore the connections between memory, history and architecture. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in such venues as the New Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1/MOMA, ...the Brooklyn Museum, and the Goetz Collection. She received her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1998."

-NYU faculty

Sue de Beer is hard to define. She makes large scale production film shorts. De Beer creates the environment in which the films take place. She creates scenes and recreates time periods like in her short The Quickening which is set in 1740 in New England. A lot of her work threads themes like growing up, adolescence, awakening and sexuality together. What interests me is the use of her sets and lighting. She creates her own rooms and houses as a setting for her work. The lighting in all of her films are directional and colorful. She creates a lot of drama with the lighting and the created sets help add to the dramatization of it all. De Beer references a lot of history and writings of the past to inform her work. Viewers take in what the see and hear while viewing her work and are presented with a fake reality to believe in. You can relate on some level to the teenage girl but also de Beer presents the teenager in such a radical way that the viewer recognizes the the drama of it all but goes along with the truth that de Beer gives you. Sue de Beer's imagination is large enough to hold any audience.

I want this to happen within my work! De Beer creates great sets like in The Quickening and Black Sun. The sets go along with the characters and are complicated by the text and monologues she uses. Sue de Beer walks you along this world she created. Its a world in her mind. There is a trust in the artist and the choices she made as an artist for you to follow her. De Beers work works so directly to what I want to create that I am starting to think I should be using moving images instead of stills. De Beer's work is also viewed as installations next to large sculptures. This puts the viewer directly into the scene of the films de Beer has created. Installation helps guide the viewer along and helps them to understand the "truths" behind de Beer's work.

"As the artist blends her own history with writings by Dennis Cooper and popular music to achieve a synthetic “truth'"

- Bomb Magazine

"De Beer reckons with what it would mean to engage much of the complexity of the show's feminist philosophy lessons and still do something different - using the teenager as both the site of her interests and as her non-site "

-Bruce Hainley

LINKS:

Gallery:

http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/artists/sue-de-beer/

Interview:

http://www.suedebeer.com/pratt.html

Website:

http://www.suedebeer.com/index.html

Barton, Nancy A. "BOMB Magazine: Sue De Beer by Nancy A. Barton." BOMB Magazine: Home Page. June-July 2005. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. http://bombsite.com/issues/92/articles/2737.

Hainley, Bruce. "Teen Angle, the Art of Sue De Beer." Sue De Beer. Artforum, Jan. 2004. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. http://www.suedebeer.com/hainley.html.

"Sue De Beer - Faculty Bio." NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Web. 01 Nov. 2010. http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Sue_de_Beer.