CUTTING BAIT
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Six of the artists are women, and it is largely their work that gives this show its punch, as they poke fun at a medium whose hierarchies have (until recently) pretty much excluded women. There is a pithy anger in some of the work. Rachel Hecker and Barbara Kass parody Lichtenstein and Warhol respectively, using familiar American icons. Hecker’s large, untitled mural mimics Lichtenstein’s early comic paintings: it’s a blowup of comic-book character Richie Rich, the young aristocratic brat who has little concept of how the other half lives. But Hecker’s treatment of her subject is more satiric than Lichtenstein’s was of his: she portrays a flatly painted Richie Rich being attacked by airbrushed giant flies realistically rendered. The blond, prosperous, cartoonish Richie Rich–representative of the white male establishment–seems to be under siege by a grotesque, bloated reality: a not very politically correct way of representing “otherness,” and so curious. It may be that this is how the white male establishment perceives its attackers, however. Hecker’s facility is striking: the image is as disturbing as it is arresting and allows the viewer to see familiar iconography with a new and questioning eye.
Kass’s two photo-silk-screened works parody both Warhol’s methods and his subject matter. Four Barbras (Jewish Jackie Series) and Single Blue Yentl (My Elvis) comment on Warhol’s white-bread Americana. The Four Barbras piece parodies his series on Jacqueline Kennedy from the early 60s. Kass replaces Jackie with Barbra Streisand, her stunning nose in profile–replaces the quiet, beautiful president’s wife with an outspoken Jewish actress. We’re made aware of how Warhol tended to celebrate those whose physical appearance was devoid of ethnicity.
In a similar vein, Berdann intersperses language with painted images. Questions in Spinal Curve is a series of minute pictures of a raised eyebrow hung on the wall in the shape of a spine; these images alternate with texts that refer to the viewer’s possible responses: “Special?” “Mediocre?” “Unusual?” “Exceptional?” and so on. The text and the images become larger as they move toward the ceiling. While Berdann has concocted an interesting structure for depicting the dichotomy between mind and body, the viewer feels constricted. Combining language with painted facial gestures too heavily steers the work, stifling a more interesting reading.
