Anxiety within art

Imagine dramatic music, blood smeared on bathroom tiles, snowflakes whirling through an apartment and a woman climbing a staircase. She introduces herself as Lucy and says she is complaining about the music. As she climbs the staircase, she recoils in horror at finding a bleeding man rising out of a bathtub. No, this isn't an Alfred Hitchcock horror film. It is Four Seasons, a movie directed by Israeli visual artist Keren Cytter being shown at the 798 Art Zone.

Four Seasons is one of four short films on show at Cytter's solo exhibition "Anxiety as an Artistic Tool" at Magician Space. The other three are Brush, Der Spiegel (The Mirror) and Video Art Manual.

The short films were all shot on handheld DV cameras, giving them an edgy, Blair Witch Project-style feel. Cytter said she drew inspiration from unorthodox directors renowned for pushing the envelope as well as audiences' sensibilities, including Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino, Lars von Trier and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

It's easy to see the directing greats' influence on Cytter in her productions' narrative styles and the overlap of time and space.

Cytter cast amateur actors in her works, producing mixed results. In Brush, the untrained actors struggle to exude emotions on camera, making her film seem a hollow window between illusion and reality.

Cytter also dabbles in various genres including melodrama, thriller, film noir and soap opera. This results in a mish-mash viewing spectacle, leading actors to provide a kind of impromptu sincerity rather than the expected entertainment.

Aside from experimenting with different film genres, Cytter also plays with different languages in her films. In Der Spiegel, dialogues range from German to English to French, with different voices overlapping and conversations fading in and out. Thankfully, subtitles prevent the film from descending into linguistic chaos.

Cytter's short stories combine commonplace events with mysterious and absurd elements, which create an equilibrium between comedy, tragedy and the grotesque. Her films document her environment, apartment, friends and family, who operate in a kind of dream world populated with egocentric goals, deep-seated frustration, personal ambitions and intimate desires.

Born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Cytter lives and works in Berlin. In 2009, she was awarded the Absolut Art Award and short listed for the Preis der Nationalgalerie Für Junge Kunst in Berlin. A prolific artist, over the past decade she has created some 40 films, a variety of plays, novels and even launched a dance troupe.

"Anxiety as an Artistic Tool" is her first exhibition in China. Aside from her solo exhibition, Cytter will also present her play Show Real Drama in Beijing and Shanghai.

Where: 798 Art Zone, 2 Jiuxianqiao Lu, Chaoyang district

When: Until May 20

Admission: Free

Contact: 5840-5117