Cinéma Mon Amour

About this book

Film and art have always been inseparably linked. The works in the exhibition 'Cinéma mon amour' show how cinema, film and the film industry are reflected in contemporary art. Artists such as Candice Breitz and Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler examine the backgrounds and mechanisms of film production; others take up the language of particular genres and specific films or, like Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, take a critical look at the film theatre as a space of perception. Even "by-products" of the film industry, such as screen credits or film posters, find their way into artworks. Finally, Hollywood and the star cult are the starting point for the works of Douglas Gordon and Sam Taylor-Johnson. Several of these aspects inform Stan Douglas' most recent video installation titled 'The Secret Agent' (2015), in which truly great cinema unfolds on six screens. With countless references from film noir and Hitchcock's thriller aesthetic to send-ups of detective films, the Canadian artist stages a spectacular readaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 spy novel 'The Secret Agent'. Exhibition: Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (22.01.-17.04.2017).