News — Jan 4, 2011

Temporary Stedelijk 2 presents a changing program encompassing highlights from the Stedelijk Museum collection and work by international contemporary artists. The museum is proud to announce the presentation of Avalanche, the latest work by Israeli artist Keren Cytter, starting on May 14. With their complex and ambiguous storylines, Cytter’s compelling films and videos invite multiple interpretations.         

Avalanche is a four-channel video installation in four parts; Ducks and Woman,Francophile, Lonely Planet and Chain Review. Screened continuously in pairs in two separate gallery spaces, the four chapters of Avalanche feature scenarios involving a handful of characters, with subtle shifts in style and plot. Filmed in Berlin and London, the videos invite the viewer to journey between different, yet related, narrative threads and locations. Specific images and events—such as a glittering disco ball, a piano, and a girl eating an apple—connect the chapters and allow spectators to identify and interpret various storylines. First screened in London, Avalanche is presented here for only the second time.

Keren Cytter’s films and videos involve a complex interweaving of experimental narrative and idiosyncratic visual language. Combining genres and styles, Cytter flouts accepted conventions of scriptwriting, storylines, fact and fiction. This subversive approach is also echoed in her editing process, where she uses discontinuity and repetition to create compelling narratives based on perpetually shifting perspectives. Cytter’s works frequently refer to canonical literature. Avalanche, for instance, echoes the themes of doubt, truth, redemption and triangular love affairs that also underpin Dostoyevsky’s masterwork The Brothers Karamazov.

About Keren Cytter

Keren Cytter (b. 1977, Tel Aviv) first exhibited her work in the Netherlands in the 2004 solo exhibition My brain is in the wall at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. Since then, Cytter’s work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions in museums and galleries in Europe and the United States, including the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; New Museum, New York and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2006 she was awarded the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. Cytter lives and works in Berlin.