Bender, Gretchen

1985

Steel light box with Fluorescent lights and movie strip

36 x 36

Brushed steel square with horizontal slit cut into center.Gretchen Benders work mines the tropes and language of mass media which she considered a cannibalistic riverthat absorbs everything. Her work, Total Recall, has a sinister appearance with its cold, metal surface and horizontal slit. Only by stepping closer and peering into the seeming void can viewers make out the illuminated words: Life Force, Moving Violation, Bio Toxin and Code of Silence, among others, all film titles. As she states: We recognize the film industry as a very important part of our culture economically and aesthetically and I think its a whole area that should be provoked more. Film and its invocations are much more powerful instruments economically and politically in our lives than we seem aware of. We say were aware of it, but in a glib way. Benders work explores the relationship between the film industry and the multi-national corporations that own them and in her words, own the worldthe mechanisms that make the world run.

1985

Bender, Gretchen

American, b. 1951

Gift of Ruth and Jake Bloom

2000.56