Mario M. Muller (continued from page 1)

The wall sculptures, two to the left, one to the right and one over the gallery desk are amoebae-like objects that first act more as set décor than individual sculptures. The five-petaled shapes echo the curvaceous and graphic flowers of the late sixties and early seventies. They could have been lifted from a Sonny and Cher duet backdrop.

The white-frosted resin flowers are finely augmented by disk-like inserts of clear plastic. The disks are richly painted with nail polish from behind and imagistically fuse into biomorphic and microcosmic details. This is confirmed by their titles: Skin of Scalp and Hair Follicle. Reading the list of nail polish colors employed (as supplied in the checklist) is a sensory experience: chocolate mousse, bronze frost, bronze ice, racy crème, wet and wild 459A, mocha Java, Dracula, burgundy, clear. The effect is that of a sexually suggestive rap lyric that could be whispered into a microphone by Missy Elliot.

Act Two begins on the landing towards the lower level. It finds an assembly of four works: a sculpture, another wall amoebae, a photograph and a smaller monitored and mute video. The sculpture is breathtaking; a full-scale straight jacket is covered in sequins fashioned from 10,000 clear frosted fake fingernails, each sewn onto the heavy cotton fabric. The object, which is displayed in a museum-like Plexiglas vitrine, is both seductive in its elegant beauty and terrifying in its narrative impact. The finger-nailed bodice is suspended by a stainless steel support. It hovers with constricting potential. The visual attraction emanates from a plumage effect rather like a molting cockatoo. Further enhancing the attractiveness is its title Camisole, 1998, a euphemism for the unaltered object.

The photograph once again to the left of the centerpiece, pictures Dooling restrained in the Camisole. The photograph, taken with a shallow depth of field focus and tightly composed, alludes to both a helplessness and resignation. The scene being witnessed is not one of struggle or chaos, but one of recovery and hope.

One more step to the left, the second video satisfies the foreshadowing of wellness. In a continuous loop, Dooling spins deliriously center frame still wearing Camisole; however, her arms are unbound and extended. The camera too is twirling, and the backdrop for this dance of liberation is an uninterrupted loop of a 360-degree pan of the Agnes B. clothing boutique. The reintroduction of fashion as a subtext for freedom of expression is an intelligent touch.

Holly Zausner’s exhibition is contained in the single rectangular-roomed Caren Golden gallery. With white painted floors, the space has always had the air of an examination room. Nothing architectural ever interferes with the art on display.

Zausner’s primary iconography emanates from a looping emblematic form which is based on the female figure. Arms connect to legs, legs to an elongated torso often with a vulval flourish and cartoonish breasts. An ovoid head sits between the once again looping arms. This figure is the leitmotif of the exhibition with variations in neon, rubber, Sculpty and photography. The figure often bears a strong resemblance to a three dimensional Rorschach print or an animated figurine of Nancy Spero.

A set of six photographs document this figurine in a various contortioned poses straddled over the back of a Jacobsen chair. In front and to the left a Jacobsen chair sits with a flat cast rubber version of her abstracted female form.

A quasi-diptych, Love and Happiness, 1998 hovers towards the rear of the gallery. A neon version of Zausner’s female symbol is positioned a few feet above a black rubber cast of an IKEA cushion. A soft impression of a body can be read in the contours of the cushion. Two large-scale photographic collages act as visual parenthetical markers at the head and tail of the collection.

Zausner has photographed her limitless variations, cut them out and assembled them in a swarming and looping abstraction of accumulation. In these two works, Boogie Wonderland, 1998 and Dancing and Boxing, 1998, Zausner’s symmetrical iconography reads solely as a bevy of butterflies darkening the skies.

Another black-and-white photograph depicts a single variation, and is placed between the gallery’s two windows which overlook Wooster Street. This single form takes on a skull-like mien and is the strongest in graphic impact. In front and to the right is another sculpture entitled You Got Me Floating, 1998. In this work, a plaster slab elevated less than an inch above the floor acts as a pedestal for a limp rubber drawing of Zausner’s female idol. On two sides of the slab, the rubber is neatly trimmed to the edges of the plaster, and on the remaining two sides, the rubber languidly collapses to the floor in a puddle of gravity-borne weight.

Lastly, one more incarnation is on display behind the gallery attendant on an office shelf. It is a brightly colored fluorescent-orange Sculpty version twisting and turning upon itself. Although it seems from its placement to be an afterthought, I realized after browsing through a binder of color Xeroxes of Zausner’s earlier works that the bright figure is a forerunner of the current exhibition.

While Dooling is the younger of the two artists by about a decade, focus and maturity of theme are chronologically inverted. Each artist has a resolutely chosen theme, but, returning to the linguistic frame of reference, Dooling’s work is the more articulate. Each work in the Kustera exhibition attains a version of perfect pitch. Dooling intuitively reigns in her expressiveness, never allowing the dramatic to deteriorate into the melodramatic. The photographs reinforce this quality by being narratively suggestive but not illustrative. This tempered restraint is also evident in Dooling’s intelligent humor, which never dissolves into cynical parody.

 

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