For NADA Miami, anonymous gallery presents a solo booth by Cristine Brache that commemorates Dorothy Stratten while reflecting on power dynamics, objectification, tragedy, death, and loss of innocence.
Dorothy Stratten, was a Canadian model and actress, primarily known for her appearances as a Playboy Playmate. Stratten was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and Playmate of the Year in 1980, and appeared in three comedy films and in at least two episodes of shows broadcast on American network television. She was murdered shortly after starring in the movie Galaxina at the age of 20 by her estranged husband and manager Paul Snider, whom she was in the process of divorcing and breaking business ties as a result of domestic violence. Snider committed suicide after he killed Stratten.
To the Playboy company, Stratten was meant to be their first big mainstream breakout star. Someone who could validate Playboy as the truly feminist enterprise it branded itself to be, one that empowers women through their own agency. Today, it is widely known that in fact the opposite is true, that Playboy did not empower their models but instead misled, exploited, and abused many of them, Stratten included.
Throughout all the abuse Stratten endured, at home and at work, she smiled through it all in public and amongst friends, perhaps hoping that if she played by the rules she could escape it all. These codified behaviors or masking for survival is at the crux of Brache’s entire conceptual body of work.
Stratten, now a cult icon, often is remembered as lost potential. A rising star, gone too soon. Someone who never had a chance and was sold bad dreams. Her 1979 poem best sums up this sentiment:
It’s here, everything -
Everything anyone ever
Dreamed of, and more.
But love is lost:
The only sacrifice
To live in this heaven,
This Disneyland
Where people are the games.
—Los Angeles, August 1979. Written after Dorothy’s introduction to Hollywood life.
On this occasion, Brache presents a series of encaustic paintings rendered from a mix of still images pulled from her Super 8 film (of red rose buds being beheaded) and video stills of women—including Dorothy Stratten—in Playboy’s iconic bunny suits (some in the company of men in suits). The visual power dynamics of the women in contrast to the men is evocative of Merlin Carpenter’s Business Women and the interplay of cut rose buds alludes to loss of innocence, life and is a tribute to those that have gone too soon. Some of the encaustic works are more vibrant while others, like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Bunny Edition)—named after Picasso’s iconic work (whose title is a reference to a street in Barcelona famed for its brothels)—is washed out, faded, and almost transparent. The image is submerged in wax, as if behind a wall of ice, faded and frozen as time moves away from the women in the painting (one of which is Stratten). Conceptually, this erasure emphasizes the artist’s recent interest in memory, longing, time, and death.
The paintings are complemented by two video-sculptures. As mentioned above, a digitized, Super-8 film of rose buds being beheaded plays on an old television set. Low-fi graphics overlay the film and reference old late night television ads—think Girls Gone Wild or odd 1-900 numbers—and old escort magazines layouts; however, roses replace women and ads, and fragmented pieces of Brache’s poetry replace the typical text one might find in such advertisements. Actual audio from such commercials is also overlaid onto the film along with AI-generated voice ads and jingles intercutting them. The AI read more of Brache’s poetry as if they were ads or film trailers creating an uncanny, haunting, and darkly humorous portrayal of commodification in relation to aforementioned themes, the sale of false, empty promises sold to people, particularly young women.
The second video-sculpture is a small ivory acrylic house, speckled with black acrylic diamonds similar to that of card suits and is a stylized interpretation of the Playboy Mansion. Entitled, Étant donnés: 1. Dorothy’s Dream, 2. Girls Gone Wild…, the doll-like house’s exterior has no entry points aside from the chimney’s. Visitors can peek into the small house through this opening. Inside, a video of Dorothy Stratten and Playboy bunnies plays accompanied by the melancholic sound of Stratten’s poem (included above) sung by a barbershop quartet. The viewing experience is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau, 2° le gaz d'éclairage; in both works the viewer can peek into another world and see the image of a dead woman.
Using the language of obsolete media as a metaphor for the passage of time and gradual obsolescence, Brache relays a personal meditation on a perpetual loss of innocence and how when juxtaposed against oblivion—can become a source of great feeling. A feeling that articulates the intensity that comes when one truly considers their own awareness and presence in one’s own body and the bittersweet beauty that accompanies its inevitable loss. It is at once a mourning and celebration of life.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Cristine Brache .