REVIEW | This Boulder art exhibit is beautiful and ugly all at once (via thknwco)
Some are cushy, if not quite cuddly, like the plush animal-like objects Jennifer Pettus makes out of various recycled fabrics and a few unexpected odds and ends, like human hair, napkin rings and faux fur.
Nothing in this show is easy to describe in words or categorize in the usual way we talk about humans, animals and other souls that inhabit physical bodies, and that is the goal of ”Grossly Affectionate.” It wants to challenge us to rethink our perceptions of the living form, refusing to allow easy descriptors like race, gender, flora, fauna, earthling, alien, beautiful, ugly or anything else.
As jarring and unattractive as the exhibit can be, “Grossly Affectionate” recognizes the beauty in all of this, but also the challenges it presents for how we understand and communicate with each other. These are confusing times for everybody, and anyone who struggles to avoid using incorrect pronouns or mis-gendering their neighbors or talking too-clumsily about ethnicity, disabilities, medical conditions, sexuality, age or other markers fully understands the situation.
Pettus’ three-dimensional objects are good examples. As you first encounter them they come off like the kind of squishy things you want to touch and hold — satiny, quilted cushions or playthings that belong in domestic settings. Her piece “No-show Blister Breath” evokes a monster from a low-budget sci-if movie with plastic, blister-pack bubbles all over its surface that make it look like it has multiple eyes. She sets it up on two concrete blocks that stand in as legs.“Grossly Affectionate continues through Sept. 5 at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, 1750 13th St., Boulder. Info: 303-443-2122 orThe contrasts in her work serve as metaphors for the contrasts in all beings, especially humans.
The same goes for Cea’s disembodied organs, and another piece, by Sam Grabowska, which resembles oversized and exposed ribs. The works come off as raw, but there is something honest about them. We hide these things because they repulse us, but better to see them and to understand that this is the stuff we are made of, and to use them to highlight the fact that these internal elements supersede notions of gender, race and even species.
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