Bonnie Collura and Rachelle Mozman Solano Exhibitions

Smack Mellon

[Image: Rachelle Mozman Solano "Child pose" (2016) pigment print, 15 3/4 x 20 in. Courtesy of the artist.]

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Smack Mellon presents two solo exhibitions, Bonnie Collura: Prince and Rachelle Mozman Solano: Metamorphosis of Failure, opening concurrently on January 12, 2019. Both artists create installations that challenge male-dominated narratives, portraying their male subjects from their positions of creative prowess. Bonnie Collura constructs several versions of a male surrogate out of disparate materials, flipping the gender roles of artist/creator and model/muse. Rachelle Mozman Solano takes on iconic artist Paul Gauguin by casting him as a self-doubting disappointment in his own biographical story, seeking affirmation from the ambivalent women who he aims to dominate. By putting forth alternative narratives, Collura and Mozman Solano envision women as empowered protagonists of their own storylines.

Bonnie Collura’s sculptural installation Prince critiques our culture’s pattern of repeating iconic characters, gestures, and polarizing traits to create heroes. In her ongoing project, Collura interprets the Prince figure as an amalgamation of four archetypal male characters from history, religion, and popular culture: Jesus, St. Sebastian, C-3PO (the droid from Star Wars), and Abraham Lincoln. Four solid, mixed-media sculptures represent each of these individuals as they gesture in response to four translucent counterparts that are made of sewn, silk organza and suspend from the ceiling like gossamer sheaths. By building both their bodies and shedding skins through sewing, the artist aims to rebuke tropes of the heroic male sculptor, as well as constructs that create patriarchal icons.

For her film and photography project Metamorphosis of Failure, Rachelle Mozman Solano takes as a point of departure the Museum of Modern Art’s 2014 exhibition of Paul Gauguin’s works on paper that he made in the South Pacific toward the end of his life. Rather than rehashing the mythologized narrative of Gauguin’s identity transformation during his immersion in Polynesian culture, Mozman Solano instead explores the history of Gauguin’s mixed identity (French and Peruvian). Her film is based on fantasies of the short time Gauguin traveled to Panama. The story satirically examines his search for subjects, “primitive” life, and racial purity as described in letters to his wife and his book Noa Noa, within a diverse Caribbean topography. In her project, Mozman Solano playfully reimagines the stories of the women who were Gauguin’s muses.