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Mass MoCA November, 1999-May5, 2000 Turn Away: A video installation by Denise Marika “Denise Marika is an artist who operates in the highly charged space between video and sculpture. This piece [Turn Away] is a complex and evocative one. In a fast-moving looped sequence, the woman faces us, opens her eyes a bit to make a quick connection and then, a moment later, abruptly rolls over and turns her back. The action is continually repeated, setting up an almost hypnotic rhythm of invitation and rejection, of vulnerability and control. Comparisons can be drawn with Nauman’s work. Although dealing with similar ideas about ritualized confinement and repression, Marika shows little of Nauman’s unpredictability and barely contained hysteria. Her work is quieter, more elegant, yet undiminished in its affective power. She has managed to go beyond the literary, the overtly psychological, to create something perhaps more difficult — a sculptural amalgam which loses nothing of its emotional immediacy.” |
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