The Greene Naftali Gallery will present a three part installation by Lucy Gunning titled Intermediate II opening February 16^th and continuing through March 17^th. Lucy Gunning lives and works in London and is widely exhibited in institutions and museums in America and Europe. Her well known early video Climbing ‘Round My Room, 1993 is currently on view in “Making Time: Video in Contemporary Art” at UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and she also has work on view at the ICA, London in the exhibition, “City Racing: A Partial View”.

Intermediate II by Lucy Gunning is composed of a video, a constructed room and a collection of ballet slippers. The title of the exhibition refers to a ballet class filmed by the artist from a busy street in the King’s Cross section of central London. The camera is hand held and the video is filmed from outside the building where the classes are taking place. The young dancers stand casually by the window resting or listening to the teacher and execute dance movements during the course of the twenty two minute video. The gestural movements of hands, heads and upper torsos move through the frames of the windows isolated and floated in an architectural grid. The focus is on the second floor but often the third floor, where another class is taking place, drifts into the frame. The sound of the piano can at times be heard through the noise of the heavy street traffic.

The constructed room is a ballet studio complete with mirrors on all sides, a balancing barre and a wood dance floor. The space is domestic in scale with just enough room for one person to dance or move freely. The practice space functional as a stage for a potential experience that is never actualized, carrying metaphorical implications of anxiety, hopes and loss. The mirrors heighten the viewer’s presence in the room and create an infinitely reflected and fractured image of the self.

The ballet slippers were collected by the artist from dancers at the Royal Ballet in London. Well worn and discarded, the slippers are lined up in pairs ranging in color, finish, size and shape. The shoes have molded to the feet of the dancers who danced in them leaving the residual memories of past performances.