Centre d’édition contemporaine Geneva

Liz Craft
Ms. America

From November 5th, 2022, to February 3rd, 2023

Vernissage, Saturday November 5th, 2022, 11:00 – 18:00
Week-end GENEVE.ART, Saturday November 5th & Sunday November 6th, 2022, 11:00 – 18:00

Rentrée du Quartier des Bains, Thursday January 12, 2023, 18:00 – 21:00

In 2021, the Centre d’édition contemporaine published New York & Beyond, 2017-2019, which brings together a selection of the artist’s works presented in the United States or Europe, as well as photographic memories of lived situations, encounters and intimate family moments. So many memories captured by Liz Craft and her entourage between 2017 and 2019. The 40-page brochure, a kind of diary in images, covers the three years that the artist spent in New York.

Liz Craft, New York & Beyond, 2017 – 2019, publication, digital printing, colour, 40 pages, 15 x 21.2 cm, 500 copies, stapled binding. Text: Paul-Aymar Mourgue d’Algue (English). Graphic design: Niels Wehrspann, Lausanne. Edition by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, 2021.

As a follow-up to the publication, the CEC has invited Liz Craft to create a new exhibition, which will take place from November 5th, 2022, to February 3rd, 2023.

For this exhibition, Ms. America, Liz Craft will be creating a new installation composed of a group of about twenty figurines of different sizes, in the image of Pac-Man, the character from the Japanese video game created in 1980. Probably inspired by the smileys of the 60s, it was used in the 90s by rave culture, including Aphex Twin aka Power-Pill, which is just as yellow as our contemporary emoji’s. If video games like “Space Invaders”, which involved killing aliens and aggressive invaders in a warlike atmosphere, Pac-Man, invented to attract women and increase the number of players, features a small, seemingly harmless, bright yellow glutton in the shape of a pizza missing a slice, who continuously devours small lozenges whilst being stuck in a maze and attacked by relentless ghosts. But what are we to make of this hero, who met with phenomenal success in the West, and especially in the United States, by being constantly hungry, insatiable, permanently dissatisfied and condemned to a state of perpetual failure? How to interpret this voracious little being, endlessly consuming, a non-stop seeker of instant gratification, experiencing short phases of pleasure thanks to a magic gum, forever forced to start over in its crazy consumer race, in a never-ending acceleration? And thus, our cute Pac-Man is turned into a compulsive consumer, totally addicted to sugar, pharmaceuticals, and drugs, caught in the net of the “always more” proposed by the great capital, be it legal or illegal.

The Pac-Man of Liz Craft and Ms. America have fittingly big yellow heads adorned with big red bows and are wrapped in a big black tunic. Presented as a group, they oscillate between a howling choir and a cult of furious, grotesque, and menacing madmen, begging to be released from this hell.

Liz Craft (1970, Los Angeles) lives and works in Berlin. Her exhibitions have included those at the Real Fine Arts Gallery, New York, Truth and Consequences, Geneva, Jenny’s, Los Angeles, and at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt between 2015 and 2022. Her work has been presented in various solo exhibitions, such as: Cavern, at the Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt (2022); Do You Love Me Now? at the Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum, Bremerhaven (2022); Escape From New York at the baby Company, New York (2019); QUERELA at the Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon (2019); Watching You Watching Me at Jenny’s Gallery, London (2018). She has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions: Kreislaufprobleme at Croy Nielsen, Vienna (2019), Tranted Loveat Confort Moderne, Poitiers (2018); Sueurs Chaudes at South Way Studio, Marseille (2017); Medusa. Bijoux et tabous at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2017).

L’esprit d’escalier

artgenève 2023
Editions and Before publications