Based on a True Story

14 April – 10 June 2012

Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens & at Centennial Square

Curated by Helena Reckitt

Please join Oakville Galleries to celebrate our spring exhibition opening on Sunday 15 April from 2:30 pm–3:30 pm at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square, followed by a reception at Oakville Galleries in Gairloch Gardens from 3:30 pm–5:00 pm.

Need a ride to Oakville? Reserve your spot on the ARTbus to the opening reception on Sunday 15 April.

With their hand-held camerawork, abrupt edits and non-linear narratives, Keren Cytter’s short films evoke an uncertain, frenzied atmosphere. Wine at a birthday party turns into blood and cake spontaneously combusts. A traumatic childhood piano lesson is re-enacted publicly in a Greek restaurant. Characters bark at one another in languages they seem not to understand, mimic each another and morph into the same person.

At once impeccably crafted and DIY in feel, Cytter’s films get under our skin. Suggesting the slippery boundary between conscious and unconscious states, these films—which until recently were primarily shot in Cytter’s apartment, starring her friends—confuse and frustrate as much as they seduce. Characters, scenes and images take on dreamlike qualities, with attendant loops and repetitions, uncanny echoes and perplexing misrecognitions. While subtitles often accompany the assorted languages spoken on screen, they don’t always correspond to the words uttered, confounding matters further.

The doomed quest for sexual and romantic fulfillment is a recurrent theme of Cytter’s, depicted with a strong dose of absurdity and lack of sentimentality. In the words of one character in Rolex (2009), Cytter’s treatment is “blood, sex, no tears.” Borrowing from sources including avant-garde film, horror flicks, reality TV, musicals and novels, Cytter’s distinct approach sheds light on today’s mediated culture: how our subjectivities can seem cobbled together from fictional scenes and images, as well as our own—and other people’s—experiences.

Spanning both Oakville Galleries locations, this exhibition combines nine short films as well as drawings, books and other printed matter, providing Cytter’s most ambitious North American survey to date. It features celebrated works that have been shown at major international events including the 2009 Venice Biennale and the New Museum’s inaugural triennial “The Generational: Younger than Jesus,” alongside lesser-known recent and earlier pieces.

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1977, Keren Cytter studied at Avni Institute for Art in Tel Aviv and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. After living in Berlin for several years, she has recently relocated to New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2011), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2010), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009), and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2008). Her work was also featured in the 2009 Venice Biennale and the New Museum's inaugural triennial "The Generational: Younger than Jesus" the same year. Cytter received the Absolut Art Award in 2009.