NYAB Event - Shannon Plumb and Heather Bennett "Dangerous Beauty"

Shannon Plumb and Heather Bennett "Dangerous Beauty"

Stephan Stoyanov Gallery

This event has ended.

Our culture of beauty allows for few faults. And rarely does it allow for maturation. Youth is vital currency; knowledge, politics, humor, ethics are superfluous. What need does beauty have of these things? Superficiality reigns while substance withers.

"Dangerous Beauty" is a bit of a send up of these conventional and yet enduring contemporary assumptions concerning the cult of beauty in our culture. Shannon Plumb and Heather Bennett have, throughout their careers, explored and exploited these issues with varying degrees of self-parody. Putting themselves front and center, acting as author, object, subject, provocateur, even comic, these artists reveal the fallacy of simplification when considering our representation of women. In their hands, the generalized images that we confront daily become not necessarily malevolent but seen for the impoverishment of alternatives they offer. Using our clichéd language as a tool, as enticement, Plumb and Bennett turn on the audience forcing them to think about their characters as more than the sum of objecthood. We cannot box in their characters, though at first glance, they seem specifically designed for us to do so. Beauty is a conduit, at first recognized as lovely folly, only to take us by the hand into darker realms.

The videos of Shannon Plumb combine a Buster Keatonesque slapstick with specific female stereotypes, giving us no choice but to laugh at the ridiculous limitations of our constructs. In "The Window Series" Plumb appears in various roles and tickles us all the while pulling the rug out from under our easy identifications. Heather Bennett's photos also masquerade as the very thing which she questions. In a new work called, "Crush" we see Bennett as a morose bride being carried over the threshold of a shabby motel. The scene smacks of artificiality, evoking an ironic fashion aesthetic but catches us in its poignancy. The title, a darkly humorous and cynical reference to the image, is enmeshed with the intimate sadness which seeps from the new couple. Both artists turn our smile into a contemplative, even guilty surprise.

Looking at the artists' work over time, this exhibition posits a structure of critique that cannot be seen when addressing only the individual works. The implication and complication of the issues dealt with by these artists as they mature conceptually and physically (yes, age) adds a new and raveled layer.