Marie José Burki - These days

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Marie José Burki's new videos and photographs are studies of contemporary society staged with a light touch. These Days circles half-staged social situations with slow camera in a park on a Sunday afternoon or after an opulent meal, how do people look? What do they do? How do they communicate with one another? How do they let themselves go? Do they withdraw into themselves? All this is observed from the view of the artist simultaneously taking part in and studying voyeurism and exhibitionism. Of Our Days translates the syntactical language of video work into a condensed sequence of photographs, which retain startling power as stills. Burki, who was born in Switzerland in 1961 and lives in Brussels, is increasingly widely known following solo museum exhibitions in Basel and Bern and participation in 1992's Documenta IX; on forays to Chelsea, she has been praised by the New York Times and Artforum .