A year of Leeson
May 14, 2008
A year of Leeson
From the SF Cronicle
For film buffs, Lynn Hershman Leeson is the San Francisco maverick who makes challenging films (”Teknolust,” “Conceiving Ada” and “Strange Culture”) that explore genres and feature performances by her friend Tilda Swinton.
Since in the early ’70s, however, the art crowd has known her as a pioneer in multimedia experimentation, a gleeful pricker of stuffy convention. Now she’s the subject of “Life (Life to the Power of N),” an ambitious, yearlong exhibition series that’s been coordinated by six arts entities.
The first part, which opened in February and runs through June 1 at the de Young Museum, is “Lynn Hershman Leeson: No Body Special,” an exhibition using a 1965 Jean Patou pantsuit to explore the collision of art, fashion and display. deyoungmuseum.org.
The San Jose Museum of Art’s component kicks in Saturday with “Global Mind Radar/Reader (An Emotional Barometer),” a compendium of blog postings on consumerism, politics and climate change. The installation ends Sept. 7. sjmusart.org.
The Hess Collection in Napa offers “CyberActive: The Work of Lynn Hershman Leeson,” a retrospective of the artist’s explorations of interactivity and identity constructs. Next Friday-Nov. 16. hesscollection.com/web/art.html.
UC Berkeley Art Museum follows with seven hours of early video work under the unwieldy title “Lynn Hershman Leeson - Virtually Everything, Virtually: An Almost Complete Retrospective of the Single-Channel Works 1977-1984.” Noon-8 p.m. June 1. bampfa.berkeley.edu.
New Langton Arts presents “The Floating Museum,” a collection of documents and ephemera from 1974 to 1978, when Hershman Leeson experimented with public, site-specific art installations in untraditional locations. Sept. 4-Oct. 25. newlangtonarts.org.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s contribution, “Life{+2} (Life Squared),” is a refiguring of “The Dante Hotel,” an early site-specific work that Hershman Leeson staged in a North Beach hotel room in 1973-74. It’s part of the museum’s major fall exhibition, “The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now,” an overview of participation-based art by 40 artists. Nov. 15-Feb. 15. sfmoma.org.
Don’t go yet: Along with her muse Swinton, Hershman Leeson hopes to shoot a vampire film next year, set on Nob Hill. Then there’s a series of three-minute documentaries commissioned by the Tate Modern museum in London and the English TV station Channel 4. “They will appear just before the news and on the Tate Web site,” says Hershman Leeson. “Tilda will hopefully do or introduce the interviews.”
- Edward Guthmann
