January 2011 in the Backspace

Curtis Erlinger: Double Feature

• January 5–29, 2011

• Opening reception Thursday, January 6, 6–8pm

• Gallery talk: Saturday, January 8, 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.