Simon Preston Gallery is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Amie Siegel, her first at the gallery, from Sunday 8 September until Sunday 6 October, 2013. Known for an expansive body of work ranging from photographs, sound, video, installations and feature films, Siegel will premiere a multi-part project that tracks backwards the origins and economic movements of cultural objects. Characteristic of the artist’s layered approach, the work self-reflexively takes on the behaviors of the system it describes.
The constellation of works circles around the global trade in furniture from the Indian city of Chandigarh. Conceived in the 1950s by architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Chandigarh’s controversial modernist architecture includes original pieces of furniture—tables, chairs, settees, desks—created specifically for the building’s interiors. Recently these pieces have appeared at auction houses around the world, commanding record prices.
A film work shown at cinematic scale, Provenance (2013) traces the furniture’s odyssey in reverse. Starting with the Chandigarh furniture in the present, the film begins in New York apartments, London townhouses, Belgian villas and Paris salons of avid collectors. From there, it moves backwards to the furniture’s sale at auction, preview exhibitions, and photography for auction catalogues, to restoration, cargo shipping containers, and Indian ports — ending finally in Chandigarh, a city in a state of entropy.
Siegel juxtaposes contemplative tracking shots, precise framing and recurrent tableaux to enact a subtly discursive cinematic space. Without interviews, actors or voice-over, the film is