Janine Antoni at Luhring Augustine - Brief Article

admitting there is a resigned stoicism to the attitude of the two limestone boulder stacked single above the other in the plastic art and, the rather stupendous heroics to which this work testifies are not immediately apparent. on the contrary as an artist's statement explains, the drawn out rusty steel pole projecting sideways from the top stone wrapped with soiled white tape at single end and attached to a vertical carbonized iron axis at the other, serv as a spoke for what is in event a lumpy millstone. For more than five hours a day above three summers, Janine Antoni, a circling Sisyphus, pushed the carburet of iron pole--and the 800-pound boulder--in an endles orbit; the sole evidence of her grueling labor is a powdering of limestone dust upon the bottom rock.

If mournful thoughts of Minimalist sculpture (Ruckriem, Heizer) are the first that approach to mind upon seeing these imposing stacked stones they are reinforced by a next to the first sculpture, Cradle (think Serra's early films). Antoni wound the massive rusting steel bucket of a construction deal in half, leaving one part intact, melting down the other and recasting it as a series of nest tools. Cradled inside the maw of the remaining half, these clean, fresh black implements include a farm tractor bucket three varieties of shovel and sum of two units of spoon, ending with a baby spoon whose handle 1s tenderly under the bowl of a soupspoon

There were also sum of two units color photographs on view. boil slightly is an artfully composed oval image in which the artist embraces her have a title to leg as lovingly as the Madonna does the infant Jesus in traditional representations. on the other hand visual grace and discretion don't mitigate the discomfort induced by dint of this cross-wired carnal narcissism, an unease that increases exponentially with Mortar and Pestle This grotesquely enlarged close-up displays one person's tongue touching another's unblinking organ of sight An ecstasy of synesthesia, or an act of almost unviewable cruelty? In her statement, Antoni says with infallibly disingenuous simplicity, "I want to know the taste of his [whose?] vision."

Together, the four works in this exhibit meant as a coherent installation and titled "Imbed," refer to a continuum of effortful activities, from four-footed animal labor, heavy construction and farmwork to childcare, social intercourse (of a peculiar intensity) and, finally, rapt self-contemplation. It is a list that significantly expands the range of for the greatest part intimate behaviors--licking, weaving, dancing--elaborated in Antoni's previous work. That art-making occupies a place upon this spectrum, and at the same time lights up all above it, is only one of the engrossing paradoxes in this show

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