Iris Moore and Christina Cobb
at Randolph Street Gallery, February 18 and 19
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But I don’t want to give the impression that her work is narcissistic: among Chicago’s performance artists (yes, I know she moved to Portland a year ago, but she still seems rooted here), Moore is the most intuitive, the most anticipatory. Yet she’s not a deliberate trendsetter. That she’s proven to be such a phenomenal influence here–on artists such as Lawrence Steger, D. Travers Scott, Douglas Stapleton and the late Randy Eslinger, Suzi Silver, Beth Tanner, Dani K. (the list goes on and on)–is simply a by-product of her personality. She’s an original. She stimulates and engages you. She challenges you. She’s generous–and sometimes a little nasty. She doesn’t mince words. The thing is, she’s so damn far ahead of the curve, it sometimes takes a while for the rest of us to catch up. By the time we get there, we’re breathless and she’s already onto something else. I’ve found that it’s a good idea to see her work more than once, and I’ve never felt that way about any other artist I’ve reviewed.
Moore’s lastest piece, The Last Act of Cruelty, made its Chicago debut at Randolph Street in mid-February. It’s a bone-chilling, aching work, wordy perhaps but visually arresting. It runs about 45 minutes but feels like a snapshot. And in many ways it is. Played out on an altar flanked by two candelabras, with the participation of Steger and Steger’s dog, Laszlo, Moore’s piece is dazzling–and so is she, bedecked in a skintight, nearly translucent lace dress.
There’s more to The Last Act of Cruelty, of course. There’s the gender play, the inherent sadism and masochism of knowing the end is coming, the longing to belong somewhere, anywhere, even if only in death. There’s enough wordplay and role-playing (not just reversal) to turn feminism on its ear, shake it up like a can of Jolt Cola and hand it back ready to explode.
