Jeanne Dunning at Feigen Contemporary - Brief Article

Since the late '80 Chicago-based photographer and filmmaker Jeanne Dunning has been investigating the body--in particular, the female body--and its physical boundaries. She has produc images of women sleeping peacefully in muddy plashs of flesh-colored pudding, or naked and overspreaded in vomitlike slime, or decorated like ice-cream sundaes with whipped cream and cherries. She has also photographed hands, fruits and vegetables in ways which call up bodily organs and/or orifices.

In her fresh work she continues to explore the female material part but with a new twist. Featured in all of the photographs (and individual of three videos shown) is a "blob" an amorphous gel-filled, flesh-colored sac with which the archetypes interact. In Blob 3, a woman fold to the breast [i]or[/i] hearts the sac while sleeping; in vesicle 4, the soft sac lies upon top of a sleeping woman and mires off her body to single side; in Blob 2, a supine woman is pinned beneath it (in this instance, the blobber has a phallic protrusion) and toils to release herself. In upon a Platter, the blob shoot outs from the bottom of a woman's shirt and spills without onto a plate that she grasps at her waist. Bathtub 2 is a bird's-eye view of a woman taking a fluid vesicle bath with the blob.

Dunning's blister is a body without definition or construction It is also unquestionably linked to fears of bodily exces and obesity. For instance, in a video titled Getting make straighted the blob lies on a bed and is being clothed in a floral wraparound skirt and lime-green top by the agency of a blonde who kneels before it. She is clearly frustrated by means of the difficulty of squeezing this enormous fluid sac into tiny clothes.

The other videos feature the artist as protagonist. Extra Skin (Adding) has Dunning standing beside a chair to set on layer after layer of flesh-color clothing until, appearing enormous, she walk lamelys off-screen. In Trying to diocese Myself, she attaches a video camera to her chest and aims it downward thus as to frame her leg She documents herself pulling upon dozens of pairs of nylon single on top of the other. We watch her sweat and hear her grunt from exertion. In the extremity she removes the thick "skin" of stockings and globules it on the floor, where it creates an uneven anthropomorphic shape.

Dunning's exhibition was extraordinary, a probe into the profunditys of issues dear to feminism--self-image in general and obesity in particular.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group