Magic Candle performed January 14th, 2023 at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles.
Magic Candle was performed as part of the solo exhibition, Double-Body. The performance incorporated source images used in Rehm’s collage works, and rituals of wrapping and automatic marking to transform surfaces and objects. The performance and exhibition considered the generative possibilities of the trance state through references to automatic writing, dermatographia, and narratives produced through the body. Rehm used imagery sourced from turn-of-of-the-century books on diseases of the female body, nature, animals, and contemporary fashion photography. Cats appear in many of the works in conversation with Hélène Cixous’ ideas around the cat as a creative conduit, a bridge between the visible and invisible realms. Rehm also looked to the work of Carolee Schneemann, who saw the cat as a medium (a material and a channel) as she explored interspecies relationships and telepathic communications in life and after death. The works in Double-body echo ideas found in the writing of fin-de-siècle author Rachilde, who wrote through a form of possession, and an imagined shapeshifting into feline form. She developed a cerebral erotics through acts of scratching, scoring, cutting, and flaying. These visceral actions speak to animal expressions, but also to the production of a collage.
Photography by Don Elder
