| Marnie Weber: The Truth Speakers, The Sea of Silence is Simon Lee Gallery’s first solo show of Marnie Weber, an L.A.-based artist and musician. This multifaceted exhibition of film, sculpture, and collage immerses the viewer in the uncanny world of Weber’s imagination. The central focus of the show is the new film, The Sea of Silence, which marks the third chapter of the Spirit Girls films. In this modern-day fable the girls play out narratives of passion and transformation in their endeavor for spiritual enlightenment. Experiencing life feels like inhaling fresh air. It’s not like you take a book, read a chapter, and you’ve gained this or that. |  |
Simon Lee Gallery
Marnie Weber: The Truth Speakers, The Sea of Silence is Simon Lee Gallery’s first solo show of Marnie Weber, an L.A.-based artist and musician. This multifaceted exhibition of film, sculpture, and collage immerses the viewer in the uncanny world of Weber’s imagination. The central focus of the show is the new film, The Sea of Silence, which marks the third chapter of the Spirit Girls films. In this modern-day fable the girls play out narratives of passion and transformation in their endeavor for spiritual enlightenment.
The previous films Songs that Never Die (2005) and A Western Song (2007) introduced the Spirit Girls, an all-female band that tragically and prematurely died in the 1970s. The films follow the girls, who were rendered mute through death, in their travels through a concurrently sinister and fanciful limbo. This world of exaggerated color contains incongruous references that span Western art to popular culture to create a realm unfixed in time. These dream-like narratives are instantly accessible but upon reflection demand further contemplation due to the artist’s fusion of the profound and the whimsical.
In Weber’s latest film, The Sea of Silence, the Spirit Girls seek out the Truth Speakers, a group of ventriloquist dolls through whom they hope to convey their message to a mass audience. When given a voice the Spirit Girls intermix profound philosophical observations on truth, beauty, and the nature of silence with crass “man walks into the bar” jokes. The performance references ventriloquism in its past and present forms, as both a form of entertainment and an act of witchcraft. The Spirit Girls’ new ability to articulate both empowers and corrupts them as they proceed to cavort with the animal audience. This performance is reminiscent of the infamous 19th-century Fox Sisters, young entertainers renowned for communicating with the afterlife through sexually explicit performances. The chaos that unfolds in the film demonstrates the purity and significance of silence.
Sculptures and collages of the Spirit Girls, the Truth Speakers, and their animal cohorts provide a textural landscape that firmly establishes the relationships between Weber’s characters. The materiality of these works constructs links to the Spirit Girls world; for these works are more than representations; they are relics that carry the emotional complexities that are rife within the Spirit Girls’ ethereal world.
