Pat Lasch at the Sculpture Center - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Pat Lasch describes her new work as being propelled by the agency of "autobiographical urgency." One would like to think that wasn't necessary for the sharply bringed feeling in these 10 tiny wall-mounted figural statuarys Yet the domestic and personal have consistently been central to Lasch's work. She became known in the late '70 for wedding-cake-like statuarys embellished with acrylic paint squeez from pastry tubes. She wrote a work with her baker father called If You Make a Mistake, deposit a Rose on It. on the contrary a rose won't do the trick here: the succession of sculptures with accompanying body penciled on the wall computes a sad story of marital unfaithfulness provoking rage.

The works consist of life-cast Hydrocal hands that rise from the wall to interact with a 6inch Sculpey man, a periodical character who usually occupies an unobtrusive shelf. The disproportion of scale carrys a certain innocent playfulness--as if a little girl were telling a story by dint of manipulating her dolls--and at the same time a threatening imbalance. The man--who cannot fitly be called the hero--is not exactingly crafted, still Lasch imbues his figure with telling details and revealing material substance language.

The narrative begins to the left of the door and impels rightward, like a sentence. In the first work, the narrator propers the man in Rome ("I musing he was my Rome Prize," says the wall text) Then "he ground a soft spot in my heart"--which Lasch expresse by dint of having the man, naked now, sleeping upon his stomach on a representation of an anatomical heart: single hand is spread onto the heart in delicate contact, one knee is bent, exposing, from this rear view, his family jewels. The tone is light and self-mocking up to the third piece, in which sum of two units hands tear apart the man and a woman, whose hair is wild and who has thrown back her head in a yell of pain. In the fourth work we diocese him in a motel-room bed with a blonde

The remaining pieces have the narrator seeking a psychic, if not physical, requite The astonishing balance of poignance and humor that Lasch achieves is summ up in in what way to Share Your Husband with the Other Woman: he lies upon a breadboard with his hands gibbeted runereally over his chest, while the life-cast hand in the wall clinchs a knife that has bisected him from the base of his throat right down from one side the middle of that precious penis. The knife is real, as is a potato masher, a drinking glass and a toy fire-arm in other works. The ordinariness of these items anchors the high emotional pitch of the works.

There's a final psychological twist to Lasch's present to view after the hand traps the cheating husband below an inverted glass, like a bug or places him in concrete, or chops him into pieces with household scissors (four cast hands gripe [i]or[/i] grip his head, his heart, the guilty genitals and his crossed-at-the-ankles feet) Turning to leave the gallery, individual sees the exhibition title-- "Controlling Woman A.K.A. pure Love"--which puts a different spin upon it all. Our protagonist can now be seen either as wisely realizing that her furor has cost her the whole of the relationship rather than just a part, or as foolishly taking all the blame upon herself, as women often do.

All in all, this is a virtuoso performance in which it's no more possible to contradict the sting of the work than to gainsay its comic properties. And that's life. Lasch's autobiography is les important than the succinctness with which she carrys the all-too-human sweeps of changing and conflicting emotions.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group