Frieze 2023
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Hot Wheels and Heidi are pleased to present a shared booth with LOOPHOLE, 2023, the newest short film of the American artist, Jordan Strafer. Primarily working in video, Strafer’s work flirts with the grotesque and is always deeply humorous and somber. She frequently draws from true stories, unsettling and perverting their reality through actors, masks, or dolls. Both galleries are due to have a solo exhibition with the artist in the forthcoming year.
LOOPHOLE, 2023 is an erotic thriller that deals with a romantic affair between a defense attorney and a juror inspired by the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in the 1990s, where shortly after Kennedy Smith was acquitted, the lead defense attorney married the forewoman of the jury. Rather than reenacting the trial, the film focuses on the affair as a potential loophole in the justice system. It is a fiction that mixes real portions of the trial’s transcript with dark fantastical love scenes. The violence symbolized by rape in this story serves as the foundation for not only a love story but the system as a whole. LOOPHOLE depicts the loss of any structure and order, exposing the abuse of power, greed, and corruption that underlay the act of sexual violence.
The film will be presented as a single-channel work on an assemblage of screens, and dialogues will be reiterated through subtitles.
LOOPHOLE is a two-part film. Part one was exhibited in 2023 at Secession, Vienna; Index, Stockholm; and KINDL, Berlin. Part two is currently being produced and will be presented at her solo show at the Renaissance Society and Hammer Museum later in 2024. Frieze 2023 is a shared presentation between Hot Wheels, Athens and Heidi, Berlin that will be Strafer’s first showing of her work in the UK.