Bruce and Norman Yonemoto
MIRROR OF DESIRE
09 Jul - 02 Oct 2022
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Mirror Of Desire, 2022, installation view at Kunstverein Hamburg. Photo: Fred Dott 2022
Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Mirror Of Desire, 2022, installation view at Kunstverein Hamburg. Photo: Fred Dott 2022
The Kunstverein in Hamburg is proud to present Mirror of Desire, the first institutional solo exhibition of Bruce (*1949, USA) and Norman Yonemoto (*1946-2014, USA) in Germany.
The artists’ highly stylized, ironic, and camp films deconstruct the visual language of advertising and the tropes of Hollywood cinema. In their work, they draw from genres like the melodrama or the soap opera to simultaneously exaggerate and deflate narrative structures, cultural mythologies, and psychoanalytic norms. Informed by queer and Asian-American perspectives, the films in Mirror of Desire exemplify a form of analysis that takes dominant visual culture and the techniques of its production as its object.
Often produced as collaborations, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s films star several figures from the Los Angeles art and performance scene, including Patricia Arquette, Goldie Glitters and Spalding Gray, Mike Kelley, Ron Vawter and Mary Woronov—all of whom appear in Mirror of Desire at the Kunstverein in Hamburg.
Curated by Milan Ther
The artists’ highly stylized, ironic, and camp films deconstruct the visual language of advertising and the tropes of Hollywood cinema. In their work, they draw from genres like the melodrama or the soap opera to simultaneously exaggerate and deflate narrative structures, cultural mythologies, and psychoanalytic norms. Informed by queer and Asian-American perspectives, the films in Mirror of Desire exemplify a form of analysis that takes dominant visual culture and the techniques of its production as its object.
Often produced as collaborations, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s films star several figures from the Los Angeles art and performance scene, including Patricia Arquette, Goldie Glitters and Spalding Gray, Mike Kelley, Ron Vawter and Mary Woronov—all of whom appear in Mirror of Desire at the Kunstverein in Hamburg.
Curated by Milan Ther