yes! soft bodies and hard bricks, something close to my heart…
this work pictured here stands in interesting contrast to the white, massive, almost sterilized installations, but it dig it all.
the installations feel a little sterile but i don’t really use that word negatively. what i mean is that so often the form of the work – almost the subject matter itself – is this sense of the abject that exudes from their structure. they are bones and flesh and folds and the morphology of disease, but enlarged and displayed but not as a kind of closet of curiosities… more like a collection of possibilities for human physiology transposed into interior spaces. so much to respond to. really interesting, and looks to be quite a virtuoso performance of carpentry – like sarah oppenheimer.
Her web site is great. These seem Tourettes-like in a good way…. anthropologically indulgent. Also, my read is that they are simultaneously serious and parodic.
Very interesting work that addresses the body from a number of standpoints; obsessive, anxious, funny.
Has anyone found a way to actually view any of the Cornerstone video online? My cursory look has only turned up the still image from the video at the gallery site.
I can’t find it anywhere. I wish more video artists would put up work on youtube or google. The synopses of it that I’ve read all say “a short video showing a human body under a stack of brick breathing.” So it may not be to hard to extrapolate from the image.
I should say, separate but related. The space that the body inhabits (and vice versa), limits and failure of the body, architectural crutches and other systems of support, recombinant adaptation, etc.
tasteless comment alert, (please just ignore if you expect better from me): this image would not be out of place as the dvd cover for a Frida-style biopic about Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre.
I don’t think that seems like a tasteless joke at all, just a strangely appropriate analogy, where the hard physical materiality meets amorphous body and each resists each other.
The drawings to me are more interesting, their sense of their own delicacy and sculpture so finely balanced, like the kind of tentative, seminal space outlined by her sculptures.
yes! soft bodies and hard bricks, something close to my heart…
this work pictured here stands in interesting contrast to the white, massive, almost sterilized installations, but it dig it all.
the installations feel a little sterile but i don’t really use that word negatively. what i mean is that so often the form of the work – almost the subject matter itself – is this sense of the abject that exudes from their structure. they are bones and flesh and folds and the morphology of disease, but enlarged and displayed but not as a kind of closet of curiosities… more like a collection of possibilities for human physiology transposed into interior spaces. so much to respond to. really interesting, and looks to be quite a virtuoso performance of carpentry – like sarah oppenheimer.
PS: i love her website. awesome interface.
Her web site is great. These seem Tourettes-like in a good way…. anthropologically indulgent. Also, my read is that they are simultaneously serious and parodic.
Very interesting work that addresses the body from a number of standpoints; obsessive, anxious, funny.
Has anyone found a way to actually view any of the Cornerstone video online? My cursory look has only turned up the still image from the video at the gallery site.
I can’t find it anywhere. I wish more video artists would put up work on youtube or google. The synopses of it that I’ve read all say “a short video showing a human body under a stack of brick breathing.” So it may not be to hard to extrapolate from the image.
She would not be out of place in this book:
Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture
I should say, separate but related. The space that the body inhabits (and vice versa), limits and failure of the body, architectural crutches and other systems of support, recombinant adaptation, etc.
tasteless comment alert, (please just ignore if you expect better from me): this image would not be out of place as the dvd cover for a Frida-style biopic about Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre.
(I lurked and then I commented)
I don’t think that seems like a tasteless joke at all, just a strangely appropriate analogy, where the hard physical materiality meets amorphous body and each resists each other.
The drawings to me are more interesting, their sense of their own delicacy and sculpture so finely balanced, like the kind of tentative, seminal space outlined by her sculptures.
this blog kicks ass btw
June 6-July 5, 2008: Jill Downen drawings at Bruno David Gallery. Here’s the link.