Katherine Bauer “Cinematic Death Moon Return: Impact Phase”

Microscope Gallery

[Image: Still from “The Vanishing Lady" (2018) by Katherine Bauer, 16mm film, silent, 17 minutes 27 seconds – Courtesy of the artist and Microscope]

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Microscope Gallery presents “Cinematic Death Moon Return: Impact Phase”, the 3rd solo exhibition of works by Katherine Bauer at the gallery.

The exhibition is the final phase of Bauer’s three-part project “Cinematic Death Moon Return” featuring installations, 16mm film, sculptures, and photographic works inspired by the closing of an upstate New York cinema that refused to convert to digital projection and reflecting a mythological and alchemical account as proposed by Bauer of the history of our planet intertwined with that of cinema. The works in the show incorporate the materials and equipment salvaged from the dismantled theater and reference the often proclaimed “death of film”, a death the artist considers as fictional as those acted by the protagonists of the big screen.

The title piece is a large-scale installation featuring moon vines coiled around hanging celluloid filmstrips, a silver 23-foot projection screen, moon flowers and other plants, crystalized 35mm projectors, and other objects all under an illuminated moon made from a 35mm film platter. These plants, which belong to the nightshade family, were often consumed throughout history by healers, shamans, and “witches” in various cultures during lunar rituals to induce dreamlike states.

Bauer will activate the installation over the course of the exhibition through two performances also based on components of her myth: the Moon generated from Earth in a primordial explosion; during the industrial revolution – of which cinema was a product – minerals were massively quarried from the Earth, altering the planet’s magnetic composition; as the quarries filled with water, moon flowers and other night-blooming plants that extract metals from the soil began to attract the Moon back to Earth.

The exhibit also marks the debut of the 16mm short film “The Vanishing Lady”, a loose narrative work shot and edited by Bauer who also performs rituals and various cinematic deaths along with other female “starlets” at locations including an abandoned theater, various bodies of water, and a trash dumpster full of discarded moving image equipment.

Other works include assemblages of crystalized projectors and their parts, other mixed-media sculptures, and photographic works including hybrid analog chromogenic prints/photograms, and photograms created during her “Impact Phase” performance. Part one “Forest Phase” and Part Two “Frozen Phase” both took place in Catskill, NY during the past year, the first as a performance installation, the latter as a private performance for film.