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jusqu'au 31 oct | until Oct 31
galerielock.com
SELINA DOROSHENKO
Selina Doroshenko’s current practice is concerned with the McLuhan extensions of the human body: the wheel, the car, the wings of a plane. These elements suggest potential energy, movement and vibrancy: a misplaced pulse. The play between the corporeal and its material counterparts becomes manifest in Up N Up N Out N Out, a new series of works that marks Doroshenko’s return to painting after experimenting with various media, and notably producing her extensive performance piece Nothing Special (2011-2013) with Emily McIntyre.
BENITA WHYTE
Embracing the bravado of the drag formula, Benita Whyte has compiled a heightened, drag version of herself that is featured in two new video works, Zero To Hero and Motions. Inspired by Warhol’s use of silkscreen as a revisionary tool in self-portraiture (Self-Portrait, 1986), Zero To Hero employs layering to distort and adorn the persona’s face. Through masking, a technique Whyte used prior in her piece Bestialiska (2012), she references cultural codes of beauty and prescribed femininity, as well as the aesthetic of the Mexican Maringuilla (‘Little Mary’) mask. Worn by male dancers during traditional festivities, it exists in “pretty” and “ugly” versions, the latter presented as a heavily made-up, lewd and disreputable character. These set prescriptions that intermesh appearance with behaviour are connected with Whyte’s interest in female typologies and performativity.
SELINA DOROSHENKO
The paintings are an amalgamation of shapes and images that emanate distinctive human character. Their phenomenological experience is similar to pareidolia, or the brain’s tendency to detect countenances in random stimuli. Like finding the face of Jesus in your soup, the human spirit is present in Up N Up N Out N Out in its varied forms: material, anthropomorphic, and abstracted onto the canvas, in shapes distorted and flat like shadows in the night, behind which lies something utterly all too human.
BENITA WHYTE
Motions borrows from iconography of the female entertainer - the pop star, the figure skater and the burlesque dancer - to put forward a manifestation of the female nude that is both revealing and restricted at the same time. This dichotomy is reiterated with “nude” undergarments, shapewear designed to ‘enhance’ while confining the female form. The interchange between modesty and exposure, the desire to perform vs. disdain for the gaze, and self-glamorization via objectification come together in a display of flesh and flesh tones. Shame, power, illusion and irony combine in a “nude” non-dance.
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