It featured Ed Ruscha (which I went to earlier) and Cathy de Monchaux. I hated the Ed Ruscha things and was weary about going back until he left but did anyway over my lunch hour.
Cathy de Monchaux was pretty interesting in a creepy kind of way especially for a gay man. DCnewsman was with me as he often is around lunch time so that was alright. We both thought that her work was pretty gross. I have to describe her artwork. Imagine crossing H.R. Giger’s art with what appears to be an ultimate lesbian feminist (I have no proof that she is actually a lesbian) obsessed with her vagina. Everything was vaginally related.
We walked into the rooms and there were these sculpted bugs on the wall. They were interesting looking so we went a little closer to see what they were. Well, they were vaginas with legs nailed to the wall. EEK! They were all over the place like a cockroach infestation. They were pretty gross looking. We did a quick about face to see a floor sculpture that was basically a giant vagina sculpted into a big box with a series of metal hands pulling it apart. We screamed like school girls and ran into the next room.
The next room still had the vagina bugs all over the wall but it wasn’t as shocking since there were plenty from the other room. There was a corner piece type thing hanging up on the wall that looked kind of like a mounted umbrella rack. It was holding a lot of spiked things with fur around them and some other things that were sculpted into other vaginally shaped objects. I was horrified but morbidly curious. The fur in the sculpture was pretty gross and just accentuated the sexuality inherent in the piece.
Along the longer wall of that room was a big grate that was about 8 inches high and about 12 feet long. on the grate were about 10 dolls per 8 inches with pieces of pink string sewed on. Well most of them were girls but there was a section of boys. Anyway, before I return to the boy part, all the pieces had the pink thread accentuating a piece of the doll that was missing or accentuated. Well you can guess that there were many vagina parts accentuated, the penises were all cut in half with the bloody looking pink thread. Some of the dolls were missing arms, legs, heads, or any other various body part. All the dolls with a similar part missing were set up in their own section.
In the same room was another grate with more vaginas sewn onto it with fur. The vaginas there were made of pink material of some kind. It was pretty creepy.
The exhibit was small, creepy and oddly fascinating. There was only one other room left. We went to it of course. There was another corner piece that was about 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide (twice since it was on the corner). And it had several pictures that were in it. They were relatively small and framed rather tightly within the glass frames which were about a foot high and wide. Well, after seeing all the other art in the area I was ready to see the object of revile all around. Well, that wasn’t the case. They were all flowers that were photographed/painted up close. I was surprised that I didn’t see any bleeding roses.
Right next to that one on an adjacent wall there was another vagina grate. This time the vaginas were put out on stalks with their pink fabric and fur. If you could pull out a vagina and still make it appear as if it were attached, that is what it would look like. It was revolting. DC and I ran out of that exhibit to look at the more mundane cubist and modern art pieces down the hall that weren’t as femocentric.
I left out some of the pieces but I assure you it was mostly the same. It was pretty creepy and I am hoping that I won’t have nightmares about some giant vagina coming to show its presence upon me. She was quite a talented artist and none of her sculptures names reflected the specific sexuality that both DC and I saw. I would recommend seeing it to another as long as you avoid the Ruscha garbage on the floor below because they elicited emotions and reactions but none of them being violent exactly. She will be at the Smithsonian’s Hirshorn museum until October 22nd and best of all it is free.
HUGS!
Sqrl
