Maria Marshall, "When I Grow Up I Want to be a Cooker," 1998, video still

Maria Marshall's work layers corrupt adult behavior onto the assumed innocence of childhood, revealing the childish desires supporting "mature" culture. This exhibition features two of Maria Marshall's videos: Once Upon A, and When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Cooker.

When I Grown Up I Want to Be a Cooker is a 20-second video of a little boy smoking a cigarette. He sucks on the cigarette, deeply inhales and luxuriantly blows out smoke rings. For twenty seconds he blows rings, filling the entire frame with smoke, and then the cycle starts again. Although visually convincing to the point of disturbing its viewers, this video was created through digital manipulation. Marshall digitized film of her son playing with a toy cigarette, mixed it with footage of smoking adults, and finally manipulated the smoke rings using special effects. Due to the quality of the film and the elegance of the digitalization, Marshall's video is lush, intimate, and sensual. The boy seduces our gaze and returns it unequivocally in what appears to be a disconcerting endorsement of corruption.

Once Upon A is a film of a children's playground as seen from above. Once digitized, Marshall removed the frames that did not include people, and then distorted the speed of the action. The recorded events, which include children's games and an occasional beating, race by while voice-over narration recounts a militarized, discordant reinterpretation of "The Three Little Pigs."

Accompanying the videos are a series of six rarely exhibited cibachrome photographs titled This game goes on forever till it falls off. Maria Marshall was born in Bombay in 1966, and currently lives and works in London. She is represented by Team Gallery in New York. This is her first exhibition in Chicago.