Painted view 2003
In the film painted view, which
Maria Friberg produced for Odd Weeks at Moderna Museet, we
encounter Maria’s sister. She is a party hostess, with
the world as her workplace. In December 2002, the sisters
travelled together to Miami, legendary jet-set paradise, world
famous for its beach life.
In one part of the film sequence Maria Friberg lets her sister
hold the spy-camera by the pool side at a luxury hotel in
Miami Beach. The other sequence shows the sister in front
of the mirror. When Maria for the first time chooses to film
a woman, she chooses a hostess – that is, a professional
in socially-geared femininity. Through her sister, the artist
gazes into another world.
At the centre is the gaze, this refined instrument that we
use more or less consciously to interact in all social situations.
The gaze as creator of meaning has been a focal point of art
throughout the ages – the viewer’s gaze, the gaze
of the portrayed, and, not to forget, the gaze of the artist.
The gaze has its own art history, and in the 20th century
seeing grew even more complex as new forms of visuality emerged.
After all, films and videos are created through the “gaze”
of the camera lens. Film seduces the modern eye.
Maria Friberg masters our contemporary visual stimuli completely,
and has a unique feel for the inherent rhythm of the image
flow and for the tempi in which we read images. In her latest
works, Maria Friberg has dealt with peripheral seeing, she
seeks the unusual angle, a feeling of being ‘out of
focus’. In painted view she playfully challenges the
classical male voyeurist gaze. Who is looking at whom?
Maria Friberg’s imagery has, until recently, been peopled
by men. In her explorations of masculinity we encounter contemporary
man – sometimes appearing as a timeless archetype in
a suit, at other times nakedly exposed to a vast natural landscape.
The works concern male identity, leadership, control and power,
but are also about being exposed and vulnerable.
Confront me back from 1997 shows
us a man writhing between two car seats. His suit and the
car upholstery blend into an impeccable shade of grey. In
another work from 1998 the artist homes in on a row of men’s
legs in black shoes underneath a table – a sharp commentary
on the male dominance of boardrooms. The same year, she used
photos of guys in suits to “prop up” a neo-modernist
building, like the atlases of classical Greek mythology. In
the almost there series from 2000
men in black suits float on the surface of a turquoise pool.
Maria Friberg has been observing men for a long time. But
she has also studied how they, in turn, observe the world
around them. The film no time to fall
from 2001 shows USA’s current president speaking to
the Congress, and Maria Friberg isolates his well-balanced
pauses. This is about rhetoric. By eliminating the slogans
she reveals the milliseconds when the leader of the superpower
allows his gaze to rest on the auditorium, anxiously awaiting
their applause.
Cecilia Widenheim
Curator Moderna Museet
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