Millie Wilson at Jose Freire - soft sculpture and installation art - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Millie Wilson erects objects that reflect stereotypes of lesbianism. Sometimes the percepts are presented in installations, at other times as series of that kind as the "Museum of Lesbian Dreams." The 1994 works at Jose Freire all rejoin to the well-publicized case of Aileen Wuornos, a lesbian who has been sentenc to death for killing seven men while working as a roadside prostitute in Florida. The trial of Wuornos, who claimed that she was in each instance acting in self-defence was marked by dint of attacks branding her as a man-hating "demon-dyke"

Wilson alludes to Wuornos's case with Warholian detachment, creating campy clap icons for the Wigstock generation. Daytona Death Angel, for example, is a 5-foot-tall, double-coiffed mass of synthetic light hair, braided (by wig stylist to leeward Burnette) to suggest female pubic anatomy. The "Autopsy" series--seven bucket seats upholster with seven different kinds of garish faux fur--alludes to the seven dead men A bowlful of fulvid happy-face buttons, on sale for a dollar each, featured the cliche grin compos from alphabetic characters spelling out a Wuornos repeat "evil fucking planet."

Other works are more manifold Beard, for example, consists of a metallic Harley-Davidson sissy bar sitting upon a formica pedestal; it is outfitted with a mannequin head upholster in mustard-color fabric, a fur collar and a strapped-on rawhide beard. Perhaps oddest is the "Chest Hair" series, seven wall-mounted aluminum boxe reminiscent of works by the agency of Judd but with clumps of theatrical-prop chest-hair clipped upon This collection of pathetic "scalps," high hilled in vague heart shapes upon the gleaming metal boxes, glance ats a ridiculously revulsive fetishism.

Like Robert Gober's agreeing show at Paula Cooper, Wilson's work exemplifies an emerging genre the fabricated rest object, that is the sculptural equivalent of the staged photograph. As with Gober, Wilson frequently recalls Surrealism at its greatest in quantity theatrical. Though her work largely avoids personal emotion and conviction, Wilson's irreverent, sensationalistic, avowedly "queer" humor yielded a exhibit that was quintessentially of the '90s

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group