Sue de Beer
Photo: Still from Sue de Beers “The Ghosts” (2011).
Working at the intersection of installation, sculpture, film, and photography, Sue de Beer creates immersive, romantic worlds of buried histories, and unparalleled beauty. Often screened in site-specific environments of the artist’s own design, her insistently narrative films are rife with allusions to literary and film histories, intimate character portraits, and meticulously crafted prose. Employing experimental cinematography optical and sensory effects throughout her work, de Beer subtly transports her viewers into vast, absorbing landscapes. Drawing on deep literary roots in her film, photography, and sculpture, the artist fuses themes and motifs borrowed from seemingly disparate genres—science fiction, gothic horror, Italian Giallo thriller, among others—into a singular visual, narrative, and cinematic language.
Sue de Beer’s work has been shown extensively across the United States and abroad. Solo exhibitions include the Kunst Werke, Berlin, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, the MuHKA Museum in Antwerp, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in Los Angeles, The Park Avenue Armory, New York, as well as Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, where she is represented. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in such venues as the New Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, PS1/MOMA, the Brooklyn Museum, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Kunst Werke, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Haus der Kunst, and the Kunsthalle Shirn in Germany, the Neue Gallerie am Landes Museum Joanneum in Austria, the Deste Foundation in Greece, and the Museum of Modern Art, Busan, in Busan, South Korea. Her 2-channel video installation, ‘Hans & Grete’ was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2004. Public Commissions include works for 1331 Yonge Street, Toronto, the High Line, New York, and Public Art Fund, Times Square. De Beer’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Deste Foundation, and the Goetz Collection. She was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2016.