Hannah Barrett & Marissa Bluestone “Critters”

La MaMa La Galleria

This event has ended.

La MaMa Galleria presents Critters—a two-person exhibition by Marissa Bluestone and Hannah Barrett, organized by Adriana Farmiga. Critters have cultivated idiosyncrasies and subcultures in order to live particular lives on their own terms. “Critter” refers to Donna Haraway’s concept of adopting new evolutionary strategies from companions, and not just human ones. Haraway writes: “Critters survive by becoming what another suggests.” This communal spirit is what gathers Marissa Bluestone’s eccentrics for tennis or coffee, in motley outfits and customized bodies. This interdependence causes players and shoppers to wilt into each other and weld together while their environments echo and absorb patterns and shapes found on the figures. Hannah Barrett picks up on the interspecies aspect of Haraway’s proposition by selecting fangs in place of neat teeth, furry faces instead of smooth ones, and bejeweled talons rather than hands groomed at the nail salon. Presented individually in their bespoke interiors, it is unclear whether Barrett’s creatures belong to a larger culture or have insulated themselves from the outside world through fashion and decor.

Critters may be rare and they may be familiar. Bluestone favors everyday scenes that are both ordinary and absurd to iconic levels: the sifting through garments at a thrift shop or the clearing of a storage unit. These are critter scenes and habitats that, when taken out of context and presented in fragment, reveal a lifestyle. Recognizable places and activities become ruptured and distorted by Bluestone’s technique of reproducing them in alarming detail from memory. Perhaps Barrett has a penchant for the rare? Barrett’s monsters wallow in a domestic civility as they get home from work, prepare to go out, or struggle with writers’ block. These creatures appear simultaneously caught in a private moment, yet formally posed for their close-up.

There’s a breathiness and bonelessness to Bluestone’s figures as they slither or contort to mold to an odd space or make room for other props or players. Negative spaces creep and crawl around the figures with various architecture or furnishing stuck to them. Barrett’s spaces are also an extension of the subject, shadow boxes of the same colorway coordinating with the mood and patterns of monster fashion. Shadows and hard edges neatly differentiate things and surfaces but the monotone color scheme binds the walls to the fur or skin of the portrait. In contrast to Barrett’s tonal atmosphere, Bluestone layers colorful oil glazes to create a festive luminosity.

At a time when figurative painting is alive and kicking, Critters presents a fictional parallel universe in which human form is stretched and remodeled. Even as anatomy undergoes radical change, the peculiar denizens of these pictures try to get comfortable with themselves and with their friends.