JOHN WATERS

He snaps a single frame from a film, often from a TV, and recombines these images into a storyboard-like sequence, thus re-directing some of his favorite films through playful acts of appropriation. Cut off from their source, the stills take on a range of new meanings, and the strip sets off a loose, irresolvable set of associations or narratives. Product Placement, 2009, features iconic film stills re-photographed and altered to show famous movie stars promoting banal consumer items as if they were magic talismans essential to the story. There’s no room for reverence here: Waters makes Aschenbach, the lovesick composer from Visconti’s Death in Venice, 1971, grasp a jar of pasta sauce instead of reaching out for imperishable beauty. Rear Projection, 2009, treats a series of actors’ bottoms as if they were cinema screens, or places anonymous backsides in preposterous cameos, looming absurdly in the background. Even the finale of a film is altered forever: after given a new life by Waters, the words “The End” will never mean quite the same thing again.

Courtesy Sprüth Magers