STL: Lutz Bacher and Aïda Ruilova at Contemporary Art Museum 9/12/08-1/4/09

For her first major museum exhibition, Lutz Bacher takes over the Main Galleries of the Contemporary. Working since the 1970s in Berkeley, California, Bacher makes use of a broad range of media to search for the noises that disfigure contemporary culture, isolating the alien images that make up our shared visual landscape. Rooted in a tradition of appropriation, she sifts through anonymous books, illustrations, pulp fiction, advertisements, and abandoned photographs. Spill maps out the artist's most current artistic territory and includes new site-specific installations, a rotating display of older works, and an artist-book.

New York-based artist Aïda Ruilova presents an installation of short videos that draw from horror films, music, and popular culture, combining interests in classic cinema with a frenetic and low-tech sensibility. Ruilova—a classically trained musician and member of the experimental music group Alva—is one of a young generation of artists who employ media with a do-it-yourself aesthetic, often drawing upon structures of cinema and music that exist outside the art world. Co-organized with the Aspen Art Museum, The Singles 1999 – Now presents a comprehensive survey of her single-channel video work since 1999 and is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue.