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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > August > 20 > Entry
Free screening of ‘Grand Paris Texas,’ a film by artists Teresa Hubbard & Alexander Birchler.
The folks at Lora Reynolds Gallery bring a terrific opportunity to see the work of an Austin-based pair of artists whose careers are largely international, not local,
The gallery offers a free film screening of ‘Grand Paris Texas,’ a film by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler.
The 54-minute film screens at 7 p.m. on Sept. 9 at the Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave. Doors open at 6 p.m. A conversation between the Blanton Museum director Ned Rifkin and the artists will follow the screening. AND IT’S FREE.
The town of Paris, Texas gained a certain level of international recognition thanks to Wim Wenders’ acclaimed 1984 feature film ‘Paris, Texas.’ (Mega-band U2, for example, noted Wenders’ movie as inspiration for their album ‘The Joshua Tree.’)
Yet ironically, the town itself didn’t really benefit. Wenders’ film never actually filmed in Paris, Texas — the place is only alluded to in Wenders’ moody story of a drifter trying to re-connect with his long-absent wife and son. Hence, whatever cinema notoriety the little Northeast Texas city might have gained was ultimately tangential.
The central protagonist of Hubbard and Birchler’s video — which was commissioned by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth — is The Grand, a time-weathered, bird-infested abandoned movie theater in downtown Paris, Texas. Combining footage of the theater along with interviews with Paris, Texas denizens, Hubbard and Birchler probe what the resonance of cinema and Wenders’ movies is in Paris, Texas.
In connection with the film, a selection of Hubbard/Birchler’s photographs relating to ‘Grand Paris Texas’ will be on view at Lora Reynolds Gallery, 360 Neuces St., from Sept. 9 —11. The artists will give a talk in the gallery at 2p.m. on Sept. 11.
See www.lorareynolds.com for more information.
Teresa Hubbard (American/Swiss) and Alexander Birchler (Swiss) live and work in Austin. Hubbard is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and both are graduate faculty members at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York. Hubbard/Birchler have been working collaboratively for 20years in photography, video and sculpture. Their extensive exhibition history includes the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, the Venice Biennial, the Tate Museum, Liverpool, Great Britain and the Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland, among many others. Their work is in numerous private and public collections around the world including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C., the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland, the Staedel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Museum Sammlung Goetz in Munich, Germany.
Video stills courtesy www.hubbardbirchler.net
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