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Shana Moulton will be screening new videos in her ongoing saga of Cynthia, Moulton's alter-ego. Over several years, in a cycle of videos, Cynthia looks for enlightenment from counter-cultural and alternative sources. During the course of her rather confused life, Cynthia accumulates a clutter of amulets, charms and occult paraphernalia. She seeks out psychic readers and encounters those who claim to have mystic powers. Yet the gentle, ever-perplexed Cynthia, played by Shana Moulton, appears never to find the right solution to her quest. This quest is filmed in a complex, multi-faceted, psychedelic and layered sequence of images, frequently involving the artist in live performances which interacts with her filmic self as Cynthia, a parallel life played out in projected form alongside Moulton's live presence on stage.
Shana Moulton's new show at Gimpel Fils is entitled Prevention. The title refers to an American health magazine that has been published for decades and deals with different aspects of health, such as nutrition and exercise. This magazine features ads for products from the pharmaceutical industry and in having Cynthia interact with these, Moulton is extending her critical practice into an area already fraught with claim and counterclaim. In a series of collages, Moulton abstracts logos from the various drugs and, in one case, Cynthia encounters a character called Lyrica, based on a product and logo of this name. Moulton characterises the industry advertising as 'omnipresent and aggressive' yet manages to neutralise this by transforming their image into something idiosyncratic, personal, surreal and occult.
For the first time, Gimpel Fils will also be displaying a number of the artist's artworks which feature in the films, including mandala-like staffs made from walking canes and pill holders, as well as the collages whose imagery is culled from the magazine.
Shana Moulton was born 1976 in Oakhurst, California. She lives and works in New York City. Moulton earned her BA from University of California, Berkeley in Art and Anthropology and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She has been an artist-in-residence at the LMCC Workspace Program, The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Harvestworks, De Ateliers in Amsterdam and The Sommerakademie in Bern. Moulton has exhibited or performed at The New Museum, SFMOMA, MoMA P.S.1, LACMA, Performa 2009, The Kitchen, Electronic Arts Intermix, Art in General, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Wexner Center for the Arts, Wiels Center for Contemporary Art in Brussels, The Migros Museum in Zurich, De Appel in Amsterdam, Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, The Times Museum in Guangzhou and The 29th Ljubljana Biennial. Moulton's work has been reviewed in the Village Voice, Artforum, the Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, Artnet Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Artpress and Flash Art. Her work has been featured on Arte TV and Art21.e for biographical history.
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