After the Lightswitch (Stagefright) (1-4)

Figurative painting is central to Melanie Ebenhoch’s work, but she regularly links this medium to a broader field of sculpture. Ebenhoch has long worked with images of women in Hollywood films, especially melodrama. As a Hollywood genre, melodrama externalizes internal conflicts, transposing them to strikingly well-composed interiors. Ebenhoch’s fascination is for how the film’s characters are included within its composition, but also for the spatialization of psychological tensions. Questions of agency are at stake here, along with representations of the female body, in work which always seeks to identify specifically female clichés and ascriptions.

Exclusively for the Kunstverein’s annual editions, Eberhoch has produced painted reliefs, all of which are based on the shapes of hats. For several years, Ebenhoch has used acrylic resin molds as the basis for her oil paintings. Her piece After the Light Switch (Stagefright) engages with the 1950 Hitchcock thriller Stage Fright. In four paintings of different colors, she incorporates shots from Hitchcock’s film noir, as well as elements of its perspective and lighting, and its light switch motif. The paintings absorb and re-present the tensions of noir’s dark nocturnal atmosphere, with their nested flashbacks, femmes fatales, false trails, and false loves.