Locust Projects

Locust Projects is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Los
Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Drew Heitzler.  Heitzler’s new
installation focuses on a two-channel video projection that explores
the 1932 film Scarface.

Before Brian DePalma’s Miami-based remake was released in 1983, an
original version of Scarface, directed by Howard Hawkes and produced
by Howard Hughes, was produced in Los Angeles.  For this exhibition,
Heitzler edits Hawkes’ film to exclude dialog and create an abstract
narrative that shifts the focus from drug and street crime to
white-collar crime and government complicity.

The installation will also include appropriated photographs from the
book Howard Hughes, His Life and Madness that explore how the Howard
Hughes Medical Center, originally headquartered in Miami, was a tax
dodge for Hughes made possible by a collaboration with Richard Nixon’s
brother.  The windows of Locust Projects will be lined with images
from the cover of a 1974 issue of Playgirl magazine, which included an
article about Howard Hughes and Richard Nixon.

Together, these works lend to the Heitzler’s practice of reconsidering
histories as he assembles a series of seemingly unrelated sources to
re-tell a story that was never explicitly told.

Drew Heitzler (b. 1972 in Charleston, South Carolina) lives and works
in Los Angeles, California.  Heitzler received his MFA from Hunter
College in 2000.  His film based projects have been exhibited
internationally at galleries and institutions including Renwick
Gallery, The Project, Orchard, The Swiss Institute, Sculpture Center,
Anthology Film Archives, and PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York;
Blum & Poe, Redling Fine Art, China Art Objects, TRUDI, and LA><ART,
in Los Angeles; The Suburban in Chicago; Zacheta National Gallery of
Art, in Warsaw, Poland; Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, in St. Gallen,
Switzerland; and Magasin Centre National d’Art Contemporain, in
Grenoble, France.  Heitzler’s collaborative film with Amy Granat,
T.S.O.Y.W., was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

This exhibition is made possible with support from: Andy Warhol
Foundation; Galt & Skye Mikesell; Hannibal Cox Jr. Foundation;
Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs
Council, the Mayor, and the Miami-Dade County Board of County
Commissioners.  Special thanks to: Blum & Poe, Los Angeles and Renwick
Gallery, New York.