Images from the film L’Enfer by Henri-Georges Clouzot

From the press release for The End of the Night:

LACE is proud to continue the collaboration with Ceci N’est Pas… in presenting The End of the Night, organized by curator Martha Kirszenbaum and designed by Exhibition Designer Marianne Zamecznik, is a bold group exhibition exploring the impact of French filmmaker, Henri-Georges Clouzot and his unfinished 1963-1964 film, L’Enfer, on notions of abstraction, the kinetic, and optical illusions in contemporary French art. For this exhibition, Kirszenbaum has invited five artists whose works reflect on Clouzot’s pictorial and sound experimentation and respond to his visual and sensorial imagination: a historical figure, Julio Le Parc, and four emerging artists, Florian & Michael Quistrebert, Isabelle Cornaro and Pierre-Laurent Cassière. Kirszenbaum’s project is a double exhibition – the other half taking place at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, emphasizing a similarly themed exploration of the work of Los Angeles experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger.

When you see the clips from Clouzot’s film at this show, it is easy to see how it could inspire an exhibition.  His use of spinning lights to create the illusion of changes in the actress’s face is one of the more mesmerizing aspects of the film.

One of the standouts from the show is the double channel projection video installation, The Eighth Sphere, by Florian & Michael Quistrebert.  The two projections of geometrical shapes merge and separate creating interesting effects.

Also at LACE tonight (11/14) there is a town hall forum that is open to the public.