Keren Cytter, Based on a True Story 

Much like our waking recollections of dreams, the narratives that drive Keren Cytter’s videos are cyclical and seductive, fantastical and frus-tratingly confusing. In Based on a True Story, the largest North American survey of the artist's work to date, curator Helena Reckitt brings together some of Cytter’s most engaging works from the past five years of her already prolific career. 

Focusing on Cytter’s strategy of blending outlandish stories and nonsensical dialogue that characterize contemporary pop cul-ture — from bad TV movies and YouTube videos, to chat rooms and online product reviews — with the humour and pathos of absurdist theatre, the exhibition foregrounds the artist’s investigation of “how our subjectivities can seem cobbled together from fictional scenes and images, as well as our own experiences.” In the Galleries’ downtown Centennial Square space, several of Cytter’s recent works purposefully blur the distinction between theatrical-ity and realism. Untitled, originally produced for the 2009 Venice Biennale, is a sixteen-minute family drama that takes place entirely on a stage, in front of a small but exuberant crowd. Using professional and amateur actors, Cytter’s drama circles back on itself, with the same dialogue and plot points reappearing to tell the (supposedly true) story of a boy who shoots his father’s mistress.