Lehmann Maupin would like to announce an exhibition of new and recent video work by Marie José Burki. This will be Burki's third solo exhibition at the gallery.
De Nos Jours (2003), a silent three-channel video installation, reveals a sun-filled grassy lawn on which a number of figures leisurely relax and recline. The camera pans slowly and steadily across the scene, bringing into frame partial images of people complacently reading magazines and lounging, as well as glimpses of empty soda cans, plastic food containers, and other detritus.
Chicken (2000) presents the single manual act of preparing a whole raw chicken before it is cooked. The fixed camera keeps the preparer faceless, while his white coat and metal trays evoke a clinical context. The matter-of-fact preparation, with its moments of delicate precision, is at times tempered with an underlying sense of violence and brutality.
The video work of Marie José Burki explores semiotics, linguistics, and social and cultural relationships and activities, often utilizing notions of nature, suspense, stasis and real-time. A solo exhibition of her work was recently on view at the Musée Des Arts Contemporains Grand-Hornu in Belgium. The artist's work is featured in public and private collections such as the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland and the Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland. Burki was born in Bienne, Switzerland and currently lives and works in Brussels.