GOTHAM ART & THEATER
by Elisabeth Kley



Twins have a special insight into the uncanny, at least if you believe Sigmund Freud’s famous 1911 essay of the same name, one of his few ventures into what he called "esthetics." The London-based twin sisters Jane and Louise Wilson (who were shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999) continue their exploration of claustrophobia and ominous emptiness in their current show at 303 Gallery on West 22st Street in Chelsea, with large photographs and a sound installation of church bells. Their earlier videos were set in authoritarian spaces that had been emptied of people, whether it was the abandoned and vandalized Stasi secret police headquarters in East Berlin or the closed-for-summer-recess British Parliament building.

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