In “You Thrill Me” photographer and video artist Eileen Cowin weaves sentimental love songs into vignettes that invite us to investigate her favorite binaries, fact verses fiction in public and private personal relationships. An attractive young blond, whose image is projected onto both sides of a large screen, sheds tears as she replays a televised love scene. The protagonist interacts with a series of four male actors, demonstrating her vulnerability in settings familiar to any movie fan. In Cowin’s skilled use of split screen staging, framing and cropping enrich the narrative, challenging us to separate truth from fiction. Sounds from this large, single channel video projection, “Sentimental Over You,” drift over to the other side of the gallery, coloring reactions to dual lines of eight video monitors hung at eye level.
With their barely animated head shots framed against blackened walls, relatives and acquaintances of the artist, male and female, at various stages of life, cycle through brief video loops, pausing at random to blow us a kiss (Pasadena City College Art Gallery, Pasadena).
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