My Evil Twin: Mirrored Madness
Janieta Eyre The Mute Book, #2 2009 Courtesy of the artist
From Candice Breitz and Adad Hannah to Octomom and Jon and Kate Plus 8, it seems that both art and pop subcultures are fixated on twins these days. This season, the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina is also picking up on the theme, wrapping their recent mirror-themed exhibition series with “My Evil Twin,” a show that explores the double in contemporary art. Four artists are featured—Janieta Eyre, Kristan Horton, Maria Hupfield and Julian Rosefeldt—with MacKenzie head curator Timothy Long stating in a release that each artist’s work with the double “can be related to fears that have their root in the loss of differences which have shaped recent experience in contemporary society.” Looking over each artist’s past production, the thematic fit is evident. Eyre is well known for her eerie photomontages of women divided, doubled and twinned, while Horton’s acclaimed Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove series reproduced movie scenes using throwaway studio ephemera. Hupfield’s Counterpoint, seen last year in “Face the Nation” at the Art Gallery of Alberta, shows seemingly identical beings in tense balance, while Rosefeldt’s television excerpts and original films have highlighted the ways individuals are made similar through gesture and dress. (A screening of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers is also slated for Halloween weekend.) Overall, it’s a fine lineup for a show premise that seems itself, at times, to be quite uncannily reproductive. (3475 Albert St, Regina SK)
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
