Oh, Pretty Things...
I was a bright-eyed 20-year old the first time I encountered the work of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. The year was 2000 and I walking through the Whitney Biennial. The work in question was The History of Glamour, a digital animation by Duncan and Blake that was something of a pseudo-rockumentary exploring the excesses and dangers of celebrity, through the guise of Charles Valentine, a teen singer and her rise to stardom. In hindsight, it is sadly poignant that the couple's tragic demise would embody so many aspects of the salacious celebrity arc that they set out to critique then. While speculation about the reasons behind these events will ensue for years to come, their death this past summer was certainly a great loss for the art world. Blake's New York gallery Kinz, Tillou, and Feigen (KTF) is opening a Memorial Exhibition from November 10th to January 5th. The show will include wall works and a retrospective of 21 animated films, screening throughout each day. Blake's last project before his death was Glitterbest, a collaborative portrait of cultural icon Malcom Mclaren. Incomplete at the time of his passing, documentation of the project will also be shown. - David Michael Perez
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