Andrew Reed Gallery is pleased to present a screening of Friedrich Kunath's About soufflé, which will be on view at the gallery in tandem with Kate Bickmore's Holding Time (Part II).

Born in East Germany and based in Los Angeles since 2007, Friedrich Kunath often evokes in his works a dual, diametrically opposed identity of the West. In About soufflé, Kunath presents a multifaceted portrait of the man and the artist navigating the instability of moving from one place to another: the in-between state.

The video About soufflé (2004) evokes a sequence from Buster Keaton’s film Sherlock Junior (1924), in which the main character finds himself thrust into a different world with each new shot. Friedrich Kunath borrows that series of settings which one and the same character walks through. It is an old special effect, both comic and surreal, although here the gag gives way to an anxiety that springs from the repetition of the gesture as in an endless loop.

As the critic Christopher Knight wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2004 on the occasion of the film's premiere: "The strongest work in the show is About Soufflé, a nearly 33-minute video exploration of the conflict between freedom and isolation, alienation and escape. To the agitated sound of urgent violins, Kunath repeatedly runs from right to let across the visual field. At regular intervals he makes a little leap – and the scenery changes, as if he’s jumped from one locale into another; Urban, suburban, rural, tropical, populated, desolate the scenes range far and wide. These edits – literal jump cuts – don’t always match Kunath’s awkward, leaps: The disjunction only adds to the sense of jumpy nervousness I’m his perpetual flight. A contemporary variation on a traditional theme – Where do we, come from? Where are we going –, this acutely observed portrait of manic desperation veers between comic and tragic, setting, just the right tone."

Friedrich Kunath contorts the notion of wanderlust to humorous effect, turning the ideals of the German Romantics on their head.