Gabriel Abrantes and Benjamin Crotty: A Positive Postmodernism at Dynasty

The exhibition 'Dynasty' at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris features Gabriel Abrantes and Benjamin Crotty, two American-born artists whose transnational backgrounds challenge the notion of a 'French emerging artistic sensibility.' Abrantes (born 1984, lives in Lisbon) studied at Cooper Union, the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, and Le Fresnoy; Crotty (born 1979, lives in Paris) studied at Yale University and the Sorbonne. Their collaborative films—'Visionary Iraq,' 'Little People of Flores II,' and 'Liberdade'—explore cultural, social, and identity issues in specific contexts: in Portugal, two adolescents leave home to fight in Iraq; in Luanda, Angola, a young Chinese woman and an African man have a forbidden love amid communist ruins. The artists employ clichés and commonplaces from telenovelas, Hollywood, contemporary art, and experimental cinema to generate new narratives, avoiding irony or cynicism. Their work is described as a 'positive postmodernism' that renews critical art. For Dynasty, they are creating a new film based on a recent papal speech in Lisbon. Abrantes is editing his short '2003, 2004, 2002… 2002,' shot in Lisbon on 16mm, about two teenage girls' night of partying and their grandmother's dream as an Inquisition judge. Crotty has completed an eight-episode TV series, 'Reine Ibi,' filmed in Finland and aired on a Portland cable channel.