In her exhibition Monstrosities at Michael Rosenthal Gallery, Jillian Mcdonald presents five video pieces and three lenticular photographs that are as much about the techniques and styles of horror films as they are about the ways we understand visual narrative through film. While Mcdonald departs from her previous work that explored the exploits and the celebrity of actor Billy Bob Thornton, she maintains her fascination with film structure, focusing on the visual dynamics of the horror film genre and blurring the border between the filmic narrative and the everyday.

Vamp It Up, 2008; video still.

HBO's "True Blood" and the Twilight series of novels have fueled the vampire's resurgence in popular culture, while the zombie's popularity has lagged behind. Unlike the zombie's, the vampire's mystique was transformed from a parasitic-like creature to one with profound sexual allure and charm by Bella Lugosi's hallmark 1931 performance in "Dracula."[1] While Mcdonald grants parity to both characters, she is most concerned with the figures as undead archetypes. In her two video pieces, Horror Make-Up (2006) and Vamp It Up, (2008) Mcdonald transforms herself on the subway from a commuting New Yorker into a zombie and vampire, respectively. Mcdonald inverts the make-up ritual of many commuting women from an act of vanity to into one with ghoulish and comical results. As her fellow riders read or stare into oblivion--avoiding eye contact with each other as is the etiquette of mass transit travel--Mcdonald applies dramatic white pancake make-up, fangs, and dark shadows around her eyes and cheek bones.

By playing with the theatricality of film make-up in the mundane setting of the New York subway, Mcdonald draws on a host of horror film visual clues and contexts. Once removed from the harsh lighting demands and context of movie sets, Mcdonald's cosmetics and props appear unconvincing and exaggerated. Moreover, this lack of naturalism is a hallmark of classic and B-horror films, which, despite the original fear they produced, today we find rather anemic and comical. Furthermore, the subway is an iconic site of horror film mayhem. Frequently, victims seeking safe passage from the city or refuge from the chaos of ground level contagion, ironically encounter zombies, vampires, or mutants who have created their own dark underground communities.

Vampire Hunt, 2007; two-channel video installation.

Mcdonald also uses herself as the subject in her two-channel video installation, Vampire Hunt (2007). Here, the viewer is positioned between two projections on opposing walls. On one, Mcdonald-as-vampire rabidly stalks an unseen victim. On the opposite wall, Mcdonald is the fleeing victim and romantic heroine. While Mcdonald occasionally turns her head to look back, both videos are primarily shot with her face in view. Mcdonald uses the frontal camera angle of the omnipresent invisible voyeur, as opposed to presenting the vantage of either character. While we understand from the classic forest chase scene that the vampire is stalking the heroine, Mcdonald interrupts this filmic trope through her camera angle and by facing the projections towards each other. As a result, the heroine and vampire are running towards each other with the viewer positioned between the two. The circuitousness of Mcdonald's video is reinforced as it loops and the cycle of chasing and fleeing is never resolved. By playing both characters, Mcdonald speaks to the horrors and fantasies that we as viewers internalize or project onto film. She thereby dismantles the relationship between the viewer, stalker, and victim, and betrays the illusion of narrative space.

Through her video performances and editing process, Mcdonald speaks to the voyeuristic pleasure we take in film, specifically the delight and terror we simultaneously experience vicariously through horror films. Mcdonald mines the conventions of horror films (e.g., forests, chase scenes, make-up and wardrobe, camera angles, etc.) to address how film shapes our understanding of visual narrative and to collide the cinematic moment with the everyday.

Jillian Mcdonald: Monstrosities is on view at Michael Rosenthal Gallery through July 22, 2009.
______________

[1] Note Ruth La Ferla's recent New York Times article "A Trend with Teeth" regarding the profusion of the vampire in television and fashion. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/fashion/02VAMPIRES.html?pagewanted=1&sq=vampires&st=cse&scp=2

Genevieve Quick is an artist and curator who has exhibited throughout the Bay Area. More information about her projects can be found at www.genevievequick.com