# Laura Parnes > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Laura_Parnes > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/Laura_Parnes.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Parnes > Source revision: 1277315155 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) **Laura Parnes** is an American contemporary artist.[1] Her work is often episodic, references pop culture, female stereotypes, history and the anxiety of influence.[2] She was the co-director of [Momenta Art](/source/Momenta_Art) with Eric Heist and helped relaunch the not-for-profit exhibition space in New York City; at first as a nomadic space and then as a permanent space in [Williamsburg, Brooklyn](/source/Williamsburg,_Brooklyn). She continued to her involvement as a Board Chair until 2011.[3] Parnes received her [BFA](/source/Bachelor_of_Fine_Arts) from the [Tyler School of Art, Temple University](/source/Tyler_School_of_Art), and lives and works in [Brooklyn](/source/Brooklyn), NY. She currently teaches in MFA departments at MICA, Parsons, and SVA.[4] ## Works and critical reception Laura Parnes' latest work, *County Down,* is an episodic, digital film investigating a pandemic of psychosis in a gated community that coincides with an adolescent girl's creation of a designer drug. Performers include Chloe Bass, [Becca Blackwell](/source/Becca_Blackwell), Ellen Cantor, [Patty Chang](/source/Patty_Chang), [Nicole Eisenman](/source/Nicole_Eisenman), Jim Fletcher, [Kate Valk](/source/Kate_Valk), Stephanie Vella and [Sacha Yanow](/source/Sacha_Yanow). The soundtrack and musical arrangements are by [Johanna Fateman](/source/Johanna_Fateman).[5] *Blood and Guts in High School*, a 50-minute Parnes video which [Chris Kraus](/source/Chris_Kraus_(American_writer)) called an “extrapolationist reduction” of [Kathy Acker](/source/Kathy_Acker)’s famous 1978 novel of the same name,[6] builds snippets of the book's original dialogue and text into scripts for theatrical vignettes.[7] [Holland Cotter](/source/Holland_Cotter) stated “the video is a model of how to bring off an ambitions project with scant resources, and also of how to respect source material while transforming it. Ms. Parnes’s video floats like a shark, forever hovering, but always watching and moving.”[8] Often her work is formally staged and uses dialogue sampled from cultural [dogma](/source/Dogma).[9] Her work *Hollywood Inferno* is a two-channel installation that refers to our cultural obsession with adolescents. The main protagonist, Sandy, is a candy store clerk who attaches herself to a script writer named Virgil, who promises career contacts and gives her a picaresque tour through cultural hell.[10] She collaborated with [Sue de Beer](/source/Sue_de_Beer) on *Heidi 2*, an unauthorized sequel to [Mike Kelley](/source/Mike_Kelley_(artist)) and [Paul McCarthy](/source/Paul_McCarthy)’s *Heidi*. In this feminist,[11] multi-media installation the artists used pop cultural tropes without apology expressing the most primal events through the idiom of sitcoms, video games and splatter films.[12] ## Exhibitions Laura Parnes' works have been exhibited widely in the United States and worldwide, including: Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece., LOOP Festival, Barcelona, Spain; Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY; Kusthalle Winterhur, Switzerland; Overgaden- Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark; iMOCA, Indianapolis, IN; Cinematexas, Austin, TX; Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, Lithuania; Museo Nacional Centro De Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Whitney Museum of American Art (1997 Whitney Biennial), NY; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand; PSI Contemporary Art Center MoMA, NY; Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, FL; and Brooklyn Museum, NY.[1] Her solo exhibitions include: LA>