PROXY GALLERY is delighted to present the exhibition All the Hallways by Joanne Mitchell. The work is a compilation of shots from Chantal Akerman’s film Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) that take place in a hallway.

In her video Mitchell highlights the structural techniques that Akerman used to call attention to the mundane, the everyday and the transitional, the very elements that give meaning to the action, the climax and the plot twist. By selecting the hallway as the organizing principle, Mitchell focuses on the movements of the protagonist into and out of rooms. Through Mitchell’s restructuring, Akerman’s predilection for long takes is abandoned to foreground its counter: cuts and repetition. The resulting re-articulation of woman in space privileges motion over stasis, busyness over waiting.

By extension, Mitchell’s video considers Proxy Gallery itself, similarly located in a secondary, marginal hallway outside the administrative offices in Graduate Fine Arts in Culver City. The transitional hallway, both in the film and in the building of Proxy Gallery, is thrust center stage and instead of serving as a conduit to more important things, it becomes the protagonist itself, reversing and calling into question the hierarchies of value.