Artist Daphne Fitzpatrick visited 43 artists’ studios and chose a single non-art object from each for this amusing group show at La Galleria at La Mama. In The Villager, Jeffery Cyphers Wright reports that the exhibit opens a window wherein we can see our own interpretations of the owner�s and their spaces. “Spread out on five tables the items appeared like archeological specimens from a rich dig. Siobhan Liddell�s gray sandstone with smoothbore holes drilled through it addressed the interface between time and sculpture. Across from it, dozed a dried cotton plant replete with a knot of withered roots, courtesy Robert Buck. A tribe of spoons with tea-bags wrapped around them, rose from a glass. The incongruity of everyday things being in the context of a gallery or museum adds a layer of irrepressibility. Sara Greenberger Rafferty�s spoons are all different. Old, ornate scrollwork on the handle provokes a positively Proustian moment as the mind reels backwards for associations. A sense of decay and deflation (literally in the case of Catherine Opie�s limp balloon souvenir) chimes from one piece to another around the room. Sam Messer�s piece dating from 1919 is a strange taxidermic chimera that practically sends shivers down your spine. Like a tiny dog or a greyhound of a mouse, it�s neck ripped and stuffing showing, it stares with glassy black eyes into a horrific void.” Read more.
As curator/museum director Helen Molesworth (I love that name!) once wrote, Daphne Fitzpatrick “reimagines�the commodity as a kind of Surrealist-inflected game piece�[she] uses the castoffs of spectacle culture to create delicate, Lilliputian tableaux inflected with visual puns�.
“Duck Soup,” curated by Daphne Fitzpatrick. La Galleria at La MaMa E.T.C. , New York, NY. Through Dec. 21.
