BE THEREThe Butcher's ShopPresented by Sonnabend April 17, 2008- April 26, 2008Philip HaasOn April 17, 2008 the Sonnabend Gallery will open THE BUTCHER'S SHOP, a new film installation by Philip Haas. The work was commissioned by the Kimbell Art Museum. On two large screens facing each other on opposing walls of the gallery, a narrative unfolds inside a butcher’s shop in Bologna, Italy, circa 1582. The film was photographed in a studio set recreating the space depicted in Annibale Carracci’s late sixteenth century painting, THE BUTCHER’S SHOP, which hangs in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. The images on one screen represent the scene shown in the painting: two butchers working amid wooden trellises with iron spikes and hooks from which animal carcasses hang, a large wooden table containing various cuts of meat, a massive chopping block with a pair of sheep’s hooves and axe, an earthen floor featuring additional animal carcasses and severed animal heads, etc. The images on the other screen represent the opposite side of the shop, a view not shown in the painting, where Annibale Carracci has set up an easel to paint a tableau canvas of the two butchers at work. The film is a meditation on Carracci's painting, work and life, and on the depiction of meat and human flesh in art from Carracci to Rembrandt to Francis Bacon. In addition to the installation, further works by Philip Haas based on the painting and film will be presented in the gallery. Philip Haas’ films made with contemporary visual artists, ranging from David Hockney and Gilbert & George to Australian aboriginal ground painters and Malagasy funerary sculptors, have been shown in retrospectives at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Additionally, he has directed six feature films, including the Oscar-nominated ANGELS & INSECTS and UP AT THE VILLA starring Sean Penn and Kristen Scott Thomas.
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