Keren Cytter: Ocean

April 5-June 23

Ocean resembles a soap opera, but with the eerily calm, disembodied voice-over of a guided meditation: “If you don’t want to drown, be an ocean.” The video begins by instructing the viewer to adjust her posture in relation to the screen and finishes by likening the viewer’s smile at her reflection to “the embarrassment of a blind date”—a playful take on Brechtian Verfremdung. The story, whose fractured plot is told from different voices and individual viewpoints, takes place in a beach house. It involves a few characters, some of whom are lovers; a lonely boy; a bit of sex; several dialogues; and passionate kissing next to a bonfire, accompanied by the sticky romanticism of Leonard Cohen’s song Undertow. The voiceover, at one point coupled with the same pulsating binaural beats as Constant State of Grace, repeats instructions on what to do and how to feel until the circular logic of the video closes in on its last words: “Concentrate, look at your reflection. You are relieved. Your mind is empty. Your thoughts are public. […] You recognize your reflection and smile with the embarrassment of a blind date. Relax. Your mind is now an ocean.”

About the artist

Keren Cytter studied at the Avni Institute for Art in Tel Aviv between 1997 and1999. She was based in Berlin between 2005 and 2012, since then she has lived and worked in New York. The artist is well known for her video works, theatrical pieces and drawings. In 2012, she founded the D.I.E NOW (Dance International Europe Now) dance company. She has also written five novels and three children’s books. Her works has been displayed in, amongst other places, the Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen (2022) the Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2020), Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2019), Museion Bolzano (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015) and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014) In 2021, Cytter was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.

This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ruth Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Arts Council of Indianapolis and City of Indianapolis