Miranda Lichtenstein:
Everything Begins and Ends at Exactly the Right Time and Place

May 1- May 30, 2010
Thurs – Sun, dusk to 11pm
UVP Montgomery Street
321 Montgomery Street
Syracuse, NY — [retired venue]

About the Work


Everything Begins and Ends in Exactly the Right Time and Place
2007 | Total Run Time: 9:04

Taking Peter Weir’s cult classic Picnic at Hanging Rock as it’s starting point, Everything Begins and Ends at Exactly The Right Time and Place finds the artist, who shares first names with the film’s iconic protagonist, wandering through a forest that seems to be unending. In this re-enactment, the act of disappearance turns out not to be an event, but an on-going process. The juxtaposition of the urban setting of the projection with the lush forest in the video creates a new context to experience Lichtenstein’s videos.

On view at UVP’s Monroe Street site.

Trance Dance
Total Run Time: 5:34

Searching, misrepresentation, failure and our troubled relationship to the natural world are components of Miranda Lichtenstein’s work. Trance Dance is a series of videos authored during various public events, yet it is not completely clear whether or not the events are engineered by the artist. What is clear is the strange environment that is revealed—a kind of cultish event with a very otherworldly soundtrack. When Trance Dance is viewed in public, its meaning shifts from one of an intense, almost spiritual experience to one of voyeurism.

On view at UVP’s Montgomery Street site.


About the Artist


Lichtenstein received her M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C; Stadthaus Ulm, Germany; Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York; Gallery Min Min, Tokyo; and Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles. She was a recipient of The Giverny Residency Program and Fellowship, Claude Monet Foundation, Giverny, France. Lichtenstein lives and works in New York.

Lichtenstein’s work screens as part of a programming block curated by the art group, Avalanche Collective.