PROXY GALLERY is pleased to present a collaborative exhibition by artists Amanda Keller-Konya and Michelle Wiener. Wiener has long made work about the way that Hollywood films represent and also shape our desire, especially as it concerns female identity; photographer Keller-Konya, known for her idiosyncratic documentary investigations, is here de-constructing fiction through material scene construction. The friendship between the two artists plays an important role in this collaborative work.

“Illicit Darkness” was one of the possible titles of the book that Hitchcock’s 1958 Vertigo was based on. The installation recreates the scene of Madeleine contemplating Portrait of Carlotta at the San Francisco Museum of the Legion of Honor. This work, made with miniature furniture, photography and constructed objects, makes three important changes in the representation of the filmic scene: 1) there is no Madeleine 2) the room is skewed by 90 degrees so we are facing a tapestry rather than the Carlotta portrait; the gallery restricts our gaze to this singular perspective. 3) In a fascinating “punctum” the bench facing the portrait where the museum-goer would normally sit has been replaced by a period armchair with a silk rope traversing it, indicating that the chair itself is an exhibit to be observed, but not to be used. Thus the work complicates the question of subjectivity and proposes an impossible position and an impossible desire.