Renée Green

The works and practice of the artist Renée Green are among the most relentless and consequent attempts to explore and extend the traditional terrain of art and to use artistic production as a strategy to question meanings and how we exist.

In contrast to many other artists of her generation, however, she diverges from the usual practice of a simple transfiguration of contents (sociology as art, etc.) by including in her videos, installations, sculptures and texts many kinds of models for discerning knowledge and in turn alludes to the tensions between them and their relative status. Irony, humour and seriousness accompany the images which emerge from a complex web of associations which circulate between the past, present and imaginings of the future. These are mingled with public and private narratives from various times and locations seen through Green’s lens and heard through her ears. The questioning of what appears to be transparent and available reflects a process which, while densely configured, alludes to cultural conditions far more distinctly and intensely than many examples of reductive systematics.

For « Between and Including » the Secession exhibition space has been converted into a maze. Within the maze one can encounter a combination of interrelated works which have been produced between 1996 to 1999 and which for the first time will be presented in relation to each other.

Character profile :

The character is often visibly detectable as a female with brown skin and dredlocks. She was born in the U.S and speaks english as her native tongue, but she studied french and in brief exchanges can seem to be from some french speaking place. Where she might be from is very dependent upon the language she speaks. She’s been asked at various times and in various places whether she’s from Martinique, Puerto Rico, Guyana, Jamaica, Some island near Venezuela, Paris, London, and New York. She’s been told by a sene-galese that she resembles a girl he knew in Senegal and by a mexican that she looks just like his cousin. She is from the metropolis, in her case New York.