The exhibition features a film by Hannah Wilke, Through the Large Glass, of her performance at the Philadelphia museum of Art based on Duchamp's major work
Accompanying the 16-mm color film will be Wilke's 30-minute videotape, Philly, documenting the making of the film.
Drawings, prints, photographs and other objects relate to the film and video in a broader way.
In the performance, which ambiguously plays out the roles of bachelor and bride, artist and art-object, voyeur and erotic object, as she is seen directly behind Duchamp's "Large Glass," Wilke uses the Glass as a stage, a framing device for her own moving, ultimately nude, figure within the abstract configuration of Duchamp's work, both complementing its intricate illusions and challenging its relegation of experience to intellectual knowledge.
Her interest in using her body as a living sculpture relates closely to earlier sculpture, in which repetitive pattern, gestural composition and subtle change are of paramount importance.
The video contrasts sharply with the formal gestures and aesthetic concentration of the film, unfolding the serio-comic sequence of events that led up to and surround the actual shooting session.
Through the Large Glass was originally made in a different form for the full-length feature film "C'est la Vie Rrose," which was produced and distributed for German television by Hans-Christof Stenzel.
"C'est la Vie Rrose," in which Wilke plays herself in a picaresque allegory of Duchamp's career, has appeared throughout Europe winning gold medals in several categories of the German Federal Film Awards for 1977.
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