Anthea Hamilton “Lichen! Libido! Chastity!”
SculptureCenter
This event has ended.
Anthea Hamilton will feature new and existing works for her first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Investigating cultural appropriation and pop culture, Hamilton mines countercultures in music, fashion, and design (such as disco in the 1970s) and their entrance into the mainstream. Hamilton questions the representation of cultural phenomena through popular media in her sculptures and videos.
A centerpiece of her exhibition at SculptureCenter, Project for door, is a new commission inspired by a model made by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce in 1972. Originally intended to be a doorway for a Manhattan skyscraper, the work was never realized. Comprised of a man’s naked bottom, people would pass between his legs, which framed a doorway. In Hamilton’s version, she has reinterpreted the model, creating a large-scale sculpture that refers to Pesce’s original idea but within a new context.
Avant-garde design, niche products, fandom, and expertise inspire Hamilton’s exhibition. Verging on the absurd, the works articulate perverse fantasies, intimately binding the body to products and things. In her works, desire is on the brink of obsession, conjuring the simultaneous discomfort of striving and potential for satisfaction inherent to a fixation on a particular thing. In Hamilton’s exhibition, objects that aspire to elegance and luxury are expressed through pleasure as well as constraint.
Media
Schedule
from September 20, 2015 to January 04, 2016
Opening Reception on 2015-09-19 from 18:00 to 20:00