Julika Rudelius’ solo exhibition at the Swiss Institute will be the first U.S. presentation of her new two-channel video installation FOREVER, which she filmed in the Hamptons, the summer retreat of New York’s high society, in 2006. In FOREVER, Rudelius casts five American women, selected for their age and particular physical beauty, who pose for the camera around swimming pools at private homes in the Hamptons. Lounging on poolside chairs and pacing around manicured backyards, the women are interviewed – although Rudelius’ questions are withheld – on topics ranging from beauty and privilege to plastic surgery and aging. These introspective soliloquies, suffused with unstated fears and anxieties, are punctuated by the women taking self-portraits with a polaroid camera. Tracing a path between pathos and critical realism, FOREVER succeeds as portraiture and as an image of the genre itself.

With the kind support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.