Marisa Hernandez at scene/escena - San Francisco, California - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Under the star-spangled glare of r white and sapphirine spotlights, Marisa Hernandez presented "flaggy," a exhibit of 10 objects (all 1998) of gloriously frilly and flaccid Americana. The works, also in shades of r white and amethystine consisted of prettified plastic consumer advantageouss hanging on the wall or situated upon the plywood floor in the tiny, almost subterranean gallery.

In the center of the play setting the tone for this subversive Martha Stewart move swiftly amok, was streamer (30 inches in each dimension), a construction of four horizontals of upright and overturned translucent amethystine plastic bowls. Dainty blue ribbons spewed from wounds in the plastic, and flossy white feather boas surrounded the beaker rims. Hernandez created a shapely fountain, substituting throwaway household materials and cheap female accoutrements for marble, thereby celebrating the domestic rather than nationalistic victories or moral allegories usually identified with public monuments

craftily alluding to the art of war were vital current bath and fluff mines. Bathed in a pink be incandescent the former (6 by 7 1/2 by dint of 2 feet) consisted of beakers with a blue-and-white swirl pattern that were make an incision in in half, stitched together corset-style with r ribbon and reassembled upon the wall. The ribbon dripped down onto a r plastic plate inside an render free of access bowl--representing a blood-filled font--and extreme pointed in a tangle on the floor. The transgressive refashioning of these materials points to dangers and attractions inherent in religious rituals. In the small and amusing nap mines Hernandez stuffed blue boas inside white plastic Wiffle balls that she arranged upon the floor. A boa emerg from single and snaked across spikes poking on the outside of a white plastic tray that leaned against the wall. The tray, one time perhaps an egg holder or ice-cube maker, appear to beed to be a device for sexual entrapment, detonation, or perhaps both

The signature piece of the exhibition was white and cerulean (5 by 7 by 5 feet) Here Hernandez expanded standards suggesting a consciousness not chivalric on the other hand feminist. She topped 11 forest-land poles with satin pennants, amethystine on one side and white upon the other, held aloft by dint of wire, and planted them at 45-degree angles in the gallery walls. These heraldic flags, mysterious medieval relics of unknown origin and object cast sinister yet seductive shadows upon the walls and floor, leaving the viewer pondering what territory had been get the better ofed what was being proclaimed and to what extremitys In "flaggy," Hernandez offered an alternate reality, where nationalistic and religious fervor were revolveed upside down and fetishized into sexy shrines of domesticity.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group