Anina Schenker is best known for her video work in which she is her own subject, mostly with closeups of her face. She focuses on routine body movements that she performs while being filmed. The slow motion replay of a headshake for instance, in Slow I, dissolves her face into a stream of soft-edged, almost amorphous images. Lips turn into frayed shadows vaguely reminiscent of sausages, hair dissolves like cotton wadding, and contours disappear. Gotten Out of the Air shows the artist with her hair flapping and her features rapidly and violently changing. One moment her face is distorted and her youthful body turned into that of an old woman, yet in the next instant her normal appearance is restored. Anina Schenker visualizes what is invisible to the naked eye. With an almost savage openness and honesty that leaves no room for embellishment Schenker’s videos jolt our awareness in a way that is not easily forgotten: face and body, we realize, have their unknown, dark, and almost fearful aspects. In sharpening the viewer’s sense and sensibility, the artist seems to suggest that we listen for the notes in between, the less than obvious shadings. In raising questions about the source of movement her videos also prompt us to see ourselves as actors with mental and physical states that merit closer attention.

1+1+1+, another video piece, has a slightly different character: composed of 230 portraits from the first 30 years of the artist’s life, it casts a fresh eye on change, development and growth. The presentation draws the viewer into a dialog with the work and with himself/herself.

Lack of costly equipment and space and an urge for self-reflection awakened by the opportunity of taking up temporary residence in a different city on a new continent have led the artist to embrace a medium that she rarely uses otherwise: drawing. The two installations, Brains and Thoughts, are closely related. Resulting from an exercise in patience and the effort to process new impressions, Brains has the serenity of a meditation. Thoughts, on the other hand, consists of journal entries reduced to simple lines – thoughts in the abstract.

Anina Schenker will continue to live and work in New York City until the end of the year.