Odessa Staircase Redux -- November 2009, Pt. 2

View Gallery Crawl video featuring Kota Ezawa's Odessa Staircase Redux and Katya Bonnenfant's Hortensia Suitcase Delux exhibitions at Haines Gallery.

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In November 2009, Gallery Crawl interviewed Kota Ezawa about his exhibition Odessa Staircase Redux, a contemporary interpretation of a dramatic scene from Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film, The Battleship Potemkin. Known as the Odessa Steps sequence, the scene depicts a brutal massacre of civilians by the Ukranian military on a grand staircase in the town of Odessa. Ezawa broke down the shapes and imagery of each cut in the Odessa Steps sequence, rendering each shot in shades of black, white and gray using india ink and paper.

Also included in the exhibition are a few photographic portraits in color, and an additional photographic interpretation of the Odessa Steps sequence shot at the San Francisco Art Institute with Ezawa's friends and students re-enacting the famous scene.

In the gallery's project space, Katya Bonnenfant played off of Ezawa's exhibition title in her series of multi-media works Hortensia Suitcase Redux, which is dominated by Bonnenfant's floral wallpaper and simple, but expressive animation.

Odessa Staircase Redux and Hortensia Suitcase Delux are on view through December 24, 2009.

Download the Educator Guide for this episode.

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