Laurie Simmons at Metro Pictures

During the late 1970 Laurie Simmons began photographing miniature tableaux, using dolls and dollhouse furniture as sustains In her latest work, Simmons has get backed to the same subject, minus the dolls. The fresh photographs are of dramatically it toy castles and architectural protoplasts of postwar suburban homes. While her earlier work make comments [i]or[/i] remarksed on the objectification and fetishization of women vacillating between nostalgia for and feminist critique of the stereotypical 1950s/1960 housewife, this fresh work seems apolitical. And while earlier Simmons returned her claustrophobic interiors on a smallish scale--so that form followed content--now she opt to monumentalize that make subordinate in large compositions that range from 20 through 30 to 47 by 60 inches. The proceed is a nightmarish atmosphere in which single is left wondering where the race are who (ostensibly) should inhabit these eerily devoid of contents dwellings.

One series, titled "The Deluxe Redding House" (1998) explores the primary-colored interior of a Bauhaus-inspired dollhouse, filled again with wood paneling, Mondrian-like wallpaper, fireplace, Breuer-inspired furniture, dishes, American eagle plaque and tiny, framed "paintings." Simmons presents us 10 views from a bird's-eye perspective. In the `White House/Green Lawn" series, which consists of four close-up views of a miniature suburban residence with peeling white paint, forest-land shingles, plastic roof and black shutter the window shades are all twitched down; long shadows augment the uneasy quality of this vacant scene

Three Castles (1998) gazes like an extreme close-up of a snow-globe. A tiny white castle, located forehead center and framed by sum of two units others at mid-distance, is dramatically lit from above, revealing translucent sapphirine towers, pink flags and drawbridge. The spectacle is covered in a new blanket of "snow," which continues to fall in this post-apocalyptic fairy tale.

In Midlake (1997) a mannequin's head, full with black wig, red lipstick and organ of sight makeup, emerges from a lake of grayish-blue water. This image may strike one as being to hark back to Simmons's mere series from 1981--a group of whimsical images showing multiple figurines sinking underwater. However, this doll is alone, in the middle of a lake, looking like a floating, decapitated head whose constant bobbing creates concentric circles in the water.

The novel photographs may lack the more apparent critical subtext which has characterized Simmons's work since the 1970 on the other hand with these gorgeously creepy and strangely seductive color-saturated images, she is certainly onto something new

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group