Author Archives: Linnea

All in the Eyes: Laurie Simmons at the Jewish Museum

Posted on by
Installation view of Laurie Simmons: How we See at the Jewish Museum

Installation view of Laurie Simmons: How We See at the Jewish Museum

It’s all in the eyes. The exhibition Laurie Simmons: How We See at the Jewish Museum, on view through August 16, features large-format glamour shots of professional models. With careful lighting and glowing color background, these are clearly staged representations of beautiful young women, just as you might see in a magazine advertisement, but larger. These headshots tower over the viewer at 70 inches high, adding to the impact when you gradually realize that the eyes are a little…off. It’s disturbing. As I stood there, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why the eyes were strangely textured for at least two minutes. Then a lightbulb went off: the eyes of the model were shut and the lid painted to resemble an eye.

Hero, 2015

How We See/Lindsay (Gold) (2015)

Simmons describes being interested in “doll girls,” women who make themselves up to resemble dolls, but that is almost the least interesting of the implications that these visually-impaired subjects have. Given that the staring eyes of the model are blind, the title of the exhibition–“How We See”–takes on new meaning. The seeing party is us, the viewers, rather than the models. This system of gazes exposes the inherent dynamic between the viewer and every work of art. We look at the art, and are presented with the illusion of a person or world that could look back at us.

It also exposes a societal bias to consume women as images, without empowering them with the ability to return the gaze (and upset those power relations). The size of the images gave weight to those readings. Even monumentalized, the seemingly inanimate women remain only larger dolls to be looked at. I found the flashy smiles and glowing backgrounds quickly became monotonous, even boring. While strong individually, the repetition of the still, theatrical images in the exhibition turns the overall effect almost banal. I’m not sure whether this result intentionally mimics the source material of advertisements being evoked or if it is an unfortunate side effect.

Sara Mejia Kriendler’s The Anthropocene at A.I.R. Gallery

Posted on by
anthropocene2

Installation view of Sara Mejia Kriendler’s exhibition The Anthropocene. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Closing this week, Sara Mejia Kriendler’s exhibition at A.I.R. gallery in DUMBO is a measured, evocative approach to humanity’s place in the world and to waste. Distinguished from the other two shows up at A.I.R. by the careful palette, here shades of ocher, mint, and rose accent neutral whites. Kriendler’s exhibition is titled The Anthropocene, a controversial scientific term for our current age based on our perceived impact on the planet. The artist uses detritus such as plastic packaging, styrofoam, and plaster to create fragmentary leftovers, seemingly crumbling with age. Yet these are clearly contemporary materials. Intimate in scale, the works still evoke grand themes of geologic time.

anthropocene3

Installation view of Sara Mejia Kriendler’s exhibition The Anthropocene. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

In the midst of these environments and altars, female forms appear. The installation In Line for the Shrine features white plaster female figures on a green foam altar backed by slabs of white styrofoam. These leaning white rectangles display fossil-like patterns, slashes, and the occasional whole form, such as that of a bird. The materials are interesting not only for the ecological concerns they recall, but in their fragility. Altars are typically made of durable material. On the other hand, the styrofoams and many plastics we use today are not recyclable and will outlast us. In Line for the Shrine, like other works in the show, plays with scale in that it renders the monumental on a diminutive scale and the human as dwarfed by its surroundings.

IMG_5305

Detail, In Line for the Shrine. Photograph my own.

Kriendler is currently a Fellowship Artist at A.I.R. Gallery. The Anthropocene is up at A.I.R. Gallery through May 31st. More detail shots below.

IMG_5295

IMG_5300

IMG_5303

IMG_5304

Fluxus & Commerce: Frieze Art Fair’s Tribute to “Flux-Labyrinth”

Posted on by

IMG_5101

A plain plywood door was the mysterious entrance that fair-goers recently waited patiently for, at Frieze Art Fair’s reenactment of the original immersive environment conceived by Fluxus founder George Maciunas in 1975 (check out photos of the realized 1976 labyrinth here). Maciunas asked artists to contribute ideas for Flux-Labyrinth that created a series of obstacles and blockages that the participant would have to overcome to continue on in the maze. This version at Frieze brought together artworks old and new. Amidst the commercial spectacle of Frieze, Flux-Labyrinth offered a bodily, rather than visual, opportunity to experience art that was not for sale. Despite the menacing waiver, this project was popular enough to draw long lines of people both the Friday, May 16 and Saturday, May 17 that I visited.

Just what were some of these obstacles? Well….

IMG_5102

First, one had to figure out how to open a door…not as straightforward as it sounds when the knob is altered on the other side…

IMG_5104

Before long a professional gentleman offered you an absurd form that he promptly stamped and shredded (Amalia Pica’s A bureaucratic obstacle)….

IMG_5108

There were some awkward steps (George Maciunas, Shoe Steps) …

IMG_5109

As well as Foam Steps and Slipper Steps (also by Maciunas)…

IMG_5111 IMG_5112

Then, there was a piano (Nam June Paik, Piano Activated Door). I played Chopsticks.

IMG_5116

Large rubber bands followed by Ay-O’s Brush Obstacle…

IMG_5118

A ball pit (Ay-O, Balloon Obstacle), and here things were starting to get rowdy…

IMG_5123

Lastly, there was a room full of strange machines, tubes, and sounds that opened onto…

IMG_5125

This grinning gentleman and five others, clad in wigs, gold hotpants and plastic tubing, whom I had to brush past to exit the labyrinth.

John Bock’s Sweat Production No. 9a thus offered the fairgoer a particularly memorable experience that certainly counter-acted much of the passive viewing that is the typically fair experience. Consider the disjunction between the site of this Flux-Labyrinth and the words of Fluxus’s first manifesto of 1963, which read: “Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, ‘intellectual,’ professional and commercialized culture; Purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art, abstract art, illusionistic art—PURGE THE WORLD OF ‘EUROPANISM!'” Playful and certainly not precious, this Frieze Project felt like a homeopathic remedy to the crush of commodity fetishism and fashion outside.