Chris Cunningham at P.S. 1 - New York - four video recordings

Over the past 15 years, British artist Chris Cunningham has worked on feature films, commercials and music videos. In 2000, he decided to pursue a career as an independent artist and filmmaker. The exhibition at P.S. 1 included four of his technically breathtaking videos, previously shown at the 2001 Venice Biennale and other venues.

All Is Full of Love (1999) is a work of arresting beauty. This video was created for a song by Bjork. Her crystalline voice and the suave melody are expertly matched by the perfect machine forms and subtle palette supplied by Cunningham. It opens with a white female android, lying on her side, with much of her metal skeleton exposed. Her face comes alive as she intones the song while a large, elaborate machine builds her body. Screws are fastened tight, elements are soldered into place and liquid paint congeals between flashes of bright white and cold blue light. Impassively, she watches her own "birth." Her identical counterpart is then built and she kneels by her side. The two androids embrace and kiss as the machine continues to work on them. This tender yet unsettling vision of the future explores themes of identity, sexuality and narcissism.

Cunningham pairs intimacy and violence in flex (2000-01). The video begins with a man and woman lying naked, softly spotlit in a field of darkness. Their glowing, intertwined bodies suddenly shift positions amid bursts of hard electronic sound by Aphex Twin (British musician Richard D. James). The couple's lovemaking becomes an act of aggression. Their initially syncopated rhythms turn to violent gestures in which first the woman and then the man seems to triumph. At one point, the woman appears, her bruised and heaving body covered with sweat and blood, and we hear her screams of pain and anguish. She then crawls through the darkness back to the man, who lies prostrate, and curls into his embrace. The cycle recommences.

Windowlicker (1998) is an often hilarious spoof of the rap video genre. Two black men cruise down a street in their car, spewing profanities as they hunt for sex. The two black hookers they approach turn them down in favor of another man in a white stretch limo. The two men eventually end up on a promenade, where voluptuous bikini-clad women, their backs to the camera, dance a meticulously choreographed number. As the men approach the women expectantly, the dancers spin around, and, to the men's horror, they wear the same grotesque grimacing facial features of a man (the press release tells us that it's the composer, Aphex Twin). This work addresses issues of race, class and gender. It unmasks certain trends in our popular culture through the tested satirical strategy of extreme exaggeration. Here, Cunningham's mastery of video results in story-telling on an epic scale where he addresses a wide variety of themes and emotions in work of the utmost sophistication.

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