JOHN MILLER & RICHARD HOECK: MANNEQUIN DEATH VIEWINGS

We are pleased to annouce dual viewings of John Miller & Richard Hoeck's film: Mannequin Death.
Metro Pictures is viewing at 83 Pitt Street, New York, April 2 - April 10, 2016
Marc Jancou Contemporary is viewing in Geneva, presently through May 3, 2016
John Miller on the making of the film: "Mannequin Death resulted from a proposal for a public work in the Südtiroler Siedlung in Innsbruck. We wanted to register, in some way, both historical immigration within Austria from the Südtirol into Innsbruck and the Tyrolean Alps as a sublime landscape. We considered the paintings of the German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich, in which the representation of observers seems to be as important as the grandiose scenery that surrounds them. Because these figures (often silhouettes) are clearly stand-ins for the viewer, they constitute a kind of empty – or variable – subject position. With this in mind, we decided to put together a set of three familial figures (mother, father and daughter) and to shoot panoramic photographs of them in the Alps.
We called this constellation “Mannequin Pioneers”. Last spring Richard took the mannequin family into the mountains along with wildlife photographer Patrick Centurioni. Richard’s partner, Kasha Fiedler, styled them. Because the paths were still icy, it was a precarious shoot. Everyone had to be cautious. Otherwise a mannequin – or even a person – might slip over the edge of a steep cliff. Even so, it seemed that this very threat of annihilation is just what distinguishes the sublime from the “merely beautiful”. To further draw out this potential, we decided to assemble a group of ten mannequins and film them falling from the edge of an Alpine cliff to their destruction. In addition we will photograph their remains and display them as a kind of evidence."
Click here for details on our current show and here for our related 2015 exhibition.