artist statement for a materialist feminist performance art practice of cleaning house

Result #1

artist statement for a materialist feminist performance art practice of cleaning house at the intersection of art, life, and politics. This performance/performance-based work embodies an understanding of the relationship between the body and the environment. In its most recent incarnation, the highly diverse group of sculptures that were on view here are more than just a body of work: They are a body of thought.A number of the works in the show were made in the form of casts, which the artist has been making since the early 90s. As with much contemporary art that relies on the circulation of ideas and materials, it is vital to consider the environmental and social dimensions of this material as well as its material characteristics. This is particularly evident in the use of cast concrete as a material for the exterior of the sculpture. Here, the concrete slab is the unit that holds together the works disparate parts. The sculpture is a kind of crumpled paperweight that consists of a myriad of small pieces of cast concrete, each one marked with a photograph of the individual. In this way, the body is not a singular object but rather an ensemble of the parts of a body that are ultimately found in a cast. In this way, the body as a whole is a subject that the artist must reconcile with the physicality of the material world. The sculptor, on the other hand, must also reconcile with the physicality of the physical world.The other large work in the show, titled Pour un désseignement dans le tableau (Place Where the Body Is), 1991, is comprised of a cast of a full-size wooden table with an extension arm. The cast is also part of the series Les métrophées dans le tableau (The Metamorphoses Into Things), 1991, which traces the evolution of the body through an examination of the various modes of production and transport of objects.

Result #2

, putting art in boxes, and making art.While Shecocks art is intended to be seen as something other than art, she does use art and art objects in a very personal way, as though the two are synonyms. For example, the work shows an obviously framed photograph of a female figure, her back turned to the viewer, her legs spread and her arms raised. Her head is cropped so that only her mouth is visible, and her body is covered in a thick layer of white paint. The painting is surrounded by a halo, and a stylized, cross-shaped band of spray paint covers the lower third of her torso. The halo also covers one of her legs, a result of spraying her from behind with a long brush, and the only other piece of painted clothing is a pair of legs that is also covered with paint. The artwork is also made of two types of objects, painted and natural: a dog-bone, a piece of wire, and a piece of carpet.This kind of work reveals the strength of Shecocks art, which is more than simply a rehashing of the familiar. It also shows her ability to use her art objects as a vehicle for personal expression.

Result #3

artist statement for a materialist feminist performance art practice of cleaning house and stitching together, yet shes also the mother of a pregnant mother and a sister of two other artists. She has also been a lifelong fan of Lees work, and her recent exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art seemed to be a deliberate response to Lees lack of recognition as a female artist. The works on view were based on Lees own drawings, which she assembled from found or purchased photos, and cut out of them; she then stretched them on the wall, creating new, sometimes bizarre, patterns that seemed to inhabit the materiality of the photographs themselves.In the main exhibition, Lees pastel-colored, object-laden drawings of young women are a key component of her practice. These pieces are taken from different types of photographs: a series of close-ups of a girl sitting on a bed in her bedroom, for example, or a sequence of women leaning over a window in their living room, while their arms are held up to the wall. The drawings are not based on the kind of subject matter traditionally associated with drawings, such as portraits or landscapes, but on the kinds of subjectivities that happen to be in the photo—lives, relationships, interests, and aspirations. It was as though Lees drawings were the product of an obsessive process, the result of a life-long search for the mysterious world of identity and belonging. The drawings were not only the product of Lees ongoing investigation into the unknown but also of the artists physical and mental state of being, as she described them in her catalogue essay for the show. Here, Lees drawings appeared to be the result of a search for identity and belonging, but also a reflection of the artists physical and mental state of being.Lees drawings are also a way of re-presenting memories. In one of her most striking pieces, which was also included in the show, Lees assembled a family tree of her own family.

Result #4

artist statement for a materialist feminist performance art practice of cleaning house and giving the work the art-historical treatment it deserves.In the present show, the work was hung in a separate room. The hulking proportions of the silkscreened silk-screened photos of former Seattle Superscreen photographers Robert Rauschenberg and Barry Whitehead, as well as the exaggerated, full-blown, enlarged-color backgrounds and landscapes that convey a certain distancing, are all in evidence. The result is a kind of show-and-tell scene of the personal and political in which the images from which the work is predicated are recast as the images of the mass media. The show is not so much about the esthetic as it is about the relationship between media images and the image-conscious public, one of the most complex and fraught in contemporary art. The picture-type as the image-image relationship was first championed by the New York Post in the early 70s, the photographs of which had been the subject of earlier art-historical analyses. But, in contrast to the ubiquitous photograph of Marilyn Monroe, as exemplified by Rauschenberg and Whitehead, whose work is made up of a number of portraits, the New York Post images are painted over. The painted backgrounds, like those of the printed pictures, reinforce the illusion that these photographs were taken by a medium-skilled hand, a sign of the importance of the labor involved in producing the image-image relationship. The result is a kind of processional, a kind of painting, in which the images are an indexical record of an event of social and political importance, one that is presented as an indexical record of an event of artistic importance, one that is also a record of an act of political transgression. In the present show, the artist has taken his cues from the New York Post, and has taken them to a completely different level.

Result #5

and organizing. Theres no formal headgear, just the clothes you wear. Theres no anonymity, just the clothes you wear. Theres no carelessness, just the clothes you wear. And then there are the clothes. Theres no more fashion-forward, new-fangled modernism. With this new, stripped-down aesthetic, theres a clear place to be.Tanya Gallucci is a contributing editor of Artforum and is a regular contributor to Artforum.