Hilary Harnischfeger and Fabienne Lasserre "The Split Wall"

Southfirst

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Lasserre’s felt- and linen-based sculptures and Harnischfeger’s carved paper, ink-stained, plastic- and mineral- encrusted tableaux share an unconventional set of influences which incorporate both the legacy of the body-conscious post-minimal work of the 1970s and the thought experiments in classic science fiction. Feminist thought flourished in both post-minimal American art and American science fiction: artists Eva Hesse, Lee Bontecou and authors Ursula LeGuin and Octavia Butler might be the matriarchs of this exhibition. The works in “The Split Wall” explore propositions through material experiments. Lasserre asks, “what if sight was not of primary importance to an artwork?” and the ensuing series of tactile sculptures emerge from this question. They occupy the gallery floor, walls and ceiling and hang pendulous or pustulate from an armature which cites-to-pervert the traditional painted square. Harnischfeger’s works are carved out of layer upon layer of stained watercolor paper. They evoke landscapes from another world replete with valleys laden with minerals and glass. With an almost scale-shifting attention to detail, Harnischfeger’s constructions are a far cry from Robert Smithson’s explorations of geology or minerals-as-material, yet they retain a kinship to his terms of interest and through the cool, unearthly quality evoked by her use of materials. Her techniques are based on the often gendered actions of “staining” and “cutting.” Lasserre and Harnischfeger remind us that there is pleasure and play in material experimentation, but also remind us of the utopian possibility of critique and subversion inherent in the romance of feminist science fiction.

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Schedule

from September 19, 2008 to October 26, 2008

Opening Reception on 2008-09-19 from 19:00 to 21:00

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