1.8.16 - 1.24.16 Sille Storihle: ONE MAN SHOW

Opening reception: January 8, 2016 – 7-10pm
Exhibition dates: January 9 - 24, 2015 - Thursdays-Sundays, noon-6pm

ONE MAN SHOW is Berlin-based artist Sille Storihle’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The show centers on two documentary shorts, The Stonewall Nation (2014) and The Tomorrow Show (2015). Drawing on archival material from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the exhibition examines the performative potential of archival documents. Using the interview format as a framework, ONE MAN SHOW engages in the telling and retelling of history by examining utopian ideas and myths concerning sexual liberation in California in the 1970s.

Invested in the transmission of history across generations, Storihle has worked closely with the accomplished Los Angeles-based actor Michael Kearns. In The Stonewall Nation (2014), Kearns impersonates the activist Don Jackson, revisiting his aim to establish a gay settlement in Northern California. The film portrays a man yearning for community and belonging, while questioning the ideological framework of his idea of a promised gay land. 

The Tomorrow Show (2015) takes Michael Kearns’ own story as its starting point. Shot in his own bedroom, the film focuses on Kearns’ life as the The Happy Hustler in the mid-70s, a fictional role he took on and acted out both on and off screen. It recounts Kearns’ memory of a trick he turned before going on the talk show, The Tomorrow Show - a return to a role that unsettles narratives of identity and history.

Sunday Jan 17, 2pm

Conversation: ONE MAN SHOW

Artist Sille Storihle invites curator at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives David E. Frantz and actor Michael Kearns for a conversation on her current exhibition at Human Resources in Los Angeles. The conversation will contextualize the exhibition and discuss questions of queer archives, transmission of history and community.

The exhibited works include print and video material from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Sille Storihle is an artist and researcher based in Berlin, working mainly with short films and publications. Her central areas of interest include gender politics, nationalism, and history. With Liv Bugge, she runs the Oslo based platform FRANK, aiming at building community, showing contemporary art and generating discussions addressing hegemonic structures in society relating to gender and sexuality. Her artistic and curatorial projects have been shown at The Norwegian Museum of Contemporary Art (2014), ONE Archives (2014), MoMA PS1 (NYABF, 2014), Manifesta 10 (On Board, 2014), The Jerusalem Show VII (2014), Kunsthall Oslo (2013), Bergen Assembly (2013), Performa 13 (2013), 11th Sharjah Biennial (2013), Unge Kunstneres Samfund (2013), and Kunstnernes Hus (2012). She holds a BA in Fine Art from Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from California Institute of the Arts.

The exhibition is supported by OCA.