BERLIN.- Galerie Guido W. Baudach presents Hey... Oh No... You're Pretty, the third solo exhibition of American video artist Aïda Ruilova. Ruilova conceived the exhibition as a series circuit of her first five film works from the year 1999, which are repeatedly projected onto different walls, dispersing their singular sound throughout the gallery. The individual, looped videos are all quite brief, their duration ranging from 30 seconds to just under 2 minutes, and they are characterized by rhythmic visual and audio cuts. They come across like cinematic post-punk sequences, and mark the moment at the end of the 1990s when Ruilova switched from music, avant-garde pop to video art, a genre she has been augmenting with her singular, experimental-underground inspired film and video pieces for one and a half decades now.

Oh No
Oh No begins with a low-angled, handheld close-up of a young woman trudging forward with panicked breath. She moves through the interior of a small apartment, repeatedly whimpering the phrase, „Oh no“. Then, a quick cut to a sweeping close-up for an electric-guitar neck, as the squelching drone of distorted noise plays counterpoint to the rhythmic, frenzied breathing and increasingly plaintive screams. The view of the woman is upended as the camera punches in on her feet, which nervously navigate a pathway of electric guitars laid head to bridge. The initial shots are repeated and intercut, punctuating the anxious walk with screams, manic giggles, and growling distortion. The woman is only depicted in extreme views, flipping between high-and-lowangled close-ups of face and feet as the camera moves along with her. Although the guitar noise and the use of guitars as props refer directly to music, in this, and in many of Ruilova’s works to follow, music is used both as an associative element within the work and as an intentional effect of the sharp, rhythmic editing.

The earliest work in this exhibition, and the first video Ruilova made after working primarily with 16mm film, Oh No reveals two dominant strains that run throughout her work: horror-movie aesthetics and music.

Hey
Hey intermixes a number of unsettling images and sounds to create a sense of tension and foreboding similar to Oh No. Like Oh No, there is a dynamic interplay between the actions in the work, the sounds created because of these actions, and the overall soundtrack that results from this repetition and metered editing of diegetic sound. Hey is set in a claustrophobic apartment-stairwell space. Stairs creak as the camera moves up over the face of an incapacitated female character. Immediately, this shot is countered by a shot from below of the same woman, this time standing, striking the stairwell with a metal bar and nervously whispering, „Hey!“. In the following shots, she taps her fingernails on the banister, the banister shakes violently, and the woman hangs precariously from a metal ladder.

As the shots begin to repeat, the compression of time – so characteristic of Ruilova’s video work – becomes even more apparent. In one shot, the camera looks back up the staircase toward the light of an open window, peering past the woman as she lies on the stairs, flailing on her stomach. Later, we see one of her legs sticking out from behind the banister, twitching, illuminated only by a bit of light that appears to emanate from the same open window. By offsetting and intercutting light and darkness, sleep and wakefulness – the most common ways that we experience and mark the passing of each day – Ruilova disrupts narrative’s traditional time flow.

You’re pretty
Ruilova’s earliest work to feature a male protagonist, You´re pretty is set in a basement-like room with cinder-block and roughly hewn stone walls. A longhaired, shirtless man kneels at the end of a long, dark hallway, hugging a guitar amplifier, rocking it back and forth, while repeatedly cooing, „You´re pretty“. A series of oblique views of the man follow, intermixed with shots of a vinyl LP being dragged along the rough stone-wall or scraped against the concrete floor. Suddenly, we see the man´s face as he stands, almost stumbling toward the camera, shrieking with surprise. Alternating with repetitions of previous shots, the man whimpers, sedately drones into a cheap microphone, and attempts to pry out the speaker from the back of the amplifier. While the claustrophobic settings of both Oh No and Hey do much to control the action and mood of the respective works, the space in You´re pretty becomes as much a character as the actor. It has distinct, darkly associative qualities absent from the domestic interiors of Oh No and Hey, and contributes directly to the overall tone of the work. The interaction between character and setting thus becomes intensely physical – the collision between the two directing movement and producing much of the resulting soundtrack.

Beat & Perv
Automaton gestures and drumbeats make up this early video, in which the artist thumps her bruised face against mirrored screens and trills, „Beat, bubeat, bu-beat... beat perv!“. Drawing from the motions of Motown backup singers – twin dancers who dip and sway in unison – Ruilova composes an unsteady rhythm of sound and doubled image. Facing a mirror, her gaze directed back at the camera, she hurtles forward and back, intoning, „Beat, bubeat, bu-beat!“. Quickly, the camera cuts to a pair of bare legs bending and locking, and the beat continues. In a sequence of collaged close-ups, a shoehorn clicks across radiator, a drumstick raps and clinks, the figure mouths the beat in silence and then repeats the words out loud, rocking against a slanted mirror. The pair of legs dips together as two hands hang loosely above them, until, finally, the figure sways forward and falls back out of frame. Beat & Perv – it’s title a simple reduction of the video´s structure – aims to corrupt (or pervert) it’s own rhythm and symmetry. While mirrored images and repeated clips offer a low-tech solution to synchronized movement and sound, Ruilova’s abrupt and fractured editing, coupled with the uneven beat, resists a steady tempo and uniform, linear composition. Here, as in many of the artist´s early single-channel works, abbreviated gestures and compressed but focused shots instead foreground the video´s elliptical structure. Ruilova’s double self, chanting compulsively between irregular drumbeats – a twisted take on the music video genre – offers a dark approach to this percussive performance.

Do it
Do it features a series of close-up shots of Ruilova as she gasps and writhes across a bed and against a wall, clasping headphones over her ears and croaking the words, „Do it...“. In a rapid-fire sequence of groans, rasping shrieks, and grunts, Ruilova captures a staccato of frenzied, repeated gestures. An agonized torso – headphones and cord tangled around her head and neck – flails and screams. A disembodied hand grasps and shakes a wooden sconce on a bare wall. At intervals, the figure, with a sedate and yielding gaze, lies motionless, uttering, „Do it...“.

Again, Ruilova creates a prismatic structure of moving images – a sexed figure thrashing on a bed, a screaming face covering the camera´s lens, a desperate, grasping fist. Yet, as the tension percolates with episodic cuts between fits of hysteria and submission, Ruilova refuses any climax in favor of contained but sustained frenzy. Under the aggressive command of the camera´s lens, the artist´s cloistered figures are often tormented, feverish, or bewitched. Here, in Do it, as in her other early works, the artist games again on the physical form, in both body and film, of psychic distress.

Aïda Ruilova’s newest, nearly feature-length film Head and Hands: My Black Angel, in which the American auteur Abel Ferrara (known for his films Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral or King of New York, among others) commentates the mysterious circumstances of the death of his Italian colleague, director Pier Paolo Pasolini, will be presented by Galerie Guido W. Baudach parallel to the exhibition in a private screening in the cinema of Soho House Berlin, and was recently shown at the Film Festival Rotterdam.

Aïda Ruilova has participated in numerous relevant international exhibitions. A selection of solo shows including: I'm So Wild about your Strawberry Mouth, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles (2013) / Goner, Salon 94, New York (2011) / Aïda Ruilova, Video Project Room, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009) / The Singles: 1999 – Now, Banff; Contemporary Art Center New Orleans; Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland; Aspen Art Museum; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2009/08) / The Silver Globe, Performa07, The Kitchen, New York (2007) / Come to Life, Salon 94 with Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York (2002) / White Room, White Columns, New York (2000).

A selection of group shows including: The Crime was Almost Perfect, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2014) / More Young Americans, L'Enclos des Bernardins, Paris (2013) / Commercial Break, Garage Projects, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice (2011) / Festival of Ideas, ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2011) / Geheimgesellschaften, Secret Societies, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; CAPC, Bordeaux (2011) / Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Bilbao (2010) / Art in the Auditorium, White Chapel Gallery, London (2010) / Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, Museums of Contemporary Art Miami, Montreal and Chicago (2008/07) / Six Feet Under, Kunstmuseum Bern (2006) / Of Mice and Men. 4 berlin biennale für zeitgenössische kunst, Berlin (2006) / Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnly Museum, Oslo, Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, Serpentine Gallery, London (2006/05) / Greater New York 2005, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005) / 2004 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004) / Clandestines, 50th Venice Biennale, Venice (2003).