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Candice Breitz, 'Same Same' at The Power Plant, Toronto

Candice Breitz at The Power Plant

Candice Breitz’s ‘Same Same’ is the artist’s first North American survey exhibition. The show will premiere a series of new works, shot in Toronto, which focus on identical twins. The new series titled Factum was fundamental to the project from the outset, the primary commission in 2009 of a program The Power Plant launched in 2006 to facilitate production of significant new works.

The exhibition’s title derives from an expression of Thai origin: 'Same, same, but different'. Works include, Four Duets (2000), which considers sameness and difference in relation to four renditions of the archetypal love song; Becoming (2003), where Breitz introduces the consumer of popular culture as a subject in the form of herself to explore the way ideals of femininity and desirability are produced through Hollywood 'chick flicks'; and Legend (A Portrait of Bob Marley) (2005), the first of a series of multi channel portraits of illustrious pop stars such as Marley, via performances by groups of their fans. The exhibition also presents Him + Her (1968–2008), where Breitz focuses solely on the celebrity icon, and in particular the identification processes that are both produced and enabled through popular cinema, restricting herself exclusively to performances by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep.

Factum, named after Robert Rauschenberg’s near-identical paintings Factum I and Factum II, 1957, focuses on identical twins and one set of identical triplets as subjects. Each individual was recorded in isolation from their sibling, but when presented side-by-side one can see the dynamic between their identical appearances. Factum reflects on the relationship between the individual and the double.

19 September 2009 - 15 November 2009