Marc Jancou Contemporary is pleased to present The Night of Forevermore, an exhibition of new work by Marnie Weber. The artist’s second solo show with the gallery, the exhibition opens on September 13th and will be on view through November 3rd.
The Night of Forevermore takes its title from Weber’s new film of the same name, which will be shown for the first time during this exhibition. In a fantastical world that exists somewhere between a Hieronymus Bosch painting and a contemporary Halloween horror movie, the film’s protagonist, a young white witch, embarks on a journey to escape the forces of darkness and regain her own powers of good. The film explores the relationship between this young witch—played by the artist’s daughter, Colette Rose Shaw—and an old witch who has sold her soul to the devil— played by the artist herself— as they traverse through haunting tableaux vivants representative of heaven, purgatory, and hell. Weber’s medieval costumery and cast of period characters underline her interest in the history of witches and witch hunts, speaking to her overarching interest in the social and political forces that have traditionally shaped representations of good and evil.
Accompanying the film is a new series of collaged paintings that incorporate figures and visual motifs from the film. As in much of Weber’s work, their imagery hybridizes human figures with the flora and fauna of the natural world: the suspended body of a young girl dons the face of an owl, while another blooms forth from a bouquet of blood red roses. Although the artist typically works in photo-based collage, this new series pairs photographic elements with painted imagery whose rich palette and dripping surfaces add a new, romantic lushness to the works. As in the film, the paintings convey an unsettling tension between the exquisite appeal of their young female subjects and the menacing darkness that appears about to overtake them, as embodied in leering monsters’ faces, crumbling tombstones and stormy landscapes.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1959, Marnie Weber lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include Marnie Weber, Forever Free, the Cinema show, a retrospective at Le Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble (2010) and The Autumn Bear at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2011). Her installation The Whispering Cave will be on view this fall at Lille3000 as part of its Fantastic 2012 festival in Lille, France. Weber’s work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.