Klein visually interprets Handel’s Messiah – with its tale of Christ’s birth, crucifixion, and ascension – as performed by numerous international choruses including the Dallas Police Choir, the Sugarland Prison choir, a drug rehab choir in Harlem and the Lavender Light Gay and Lesbian Interracial Choir.
Klein’s impressionistic visualization takes the viewer (and listener) all over the world and includes women boxers at the Taj Mahal Las Vegas; Promise Keepers in Detroit’s Superdome; a Paris Christmas party for the homeless; wealthy arts patrons attired for Houston’s annual Hair Ball; a Danish woman in a Bastille tattoo parlour having her belly covered in religious scenes; blessing ceremonies of the Unification Church, a graphic lynching in Liberia; a Spanish production of the crucifixion play and the Ministers of Muscle preaching the gospel across America.
This is a deeply poetic and disturbing portrait of the dysfunctional family of man, told through a moving montage of the sacred and the profane.
James Armstrong
Lecturer in Visual Culture, NCAD
