Joel Otterson at Jay Gorney - New York, New York

Upstairs at "The Iron Maiden," Joel Otterson's domestic installation, a life-size cast-iron statue of a neo-'70 rocker Venus, the Iron Maiden (a.k.a.) Brenda), in a micro-miniskirt and platform sandals presided above a living room of outlandish furniture. The pieces included chairs and daybeds made of sawed-up bathtubs and upholster in crewel work and real beaver and otter skin s - the last an intentional clinch on the artist's name. Television Vanity was the central focus of this tableau: it is a freestanding contraption comprising a two-way mirror, apportionments of copper and brass pipe fittings, and a TV and VCR upon which you can watch, among other things, a heart-wrenching documentary about the anorexic singer Karen Carpenter. Exhibited along the walls upon high shelves was a series of improbable "Heavy Metal" and "Dead stone Star" porcelain services (all made, as were the larger plastic arts during a residency at the Kohler fixture factory in Sheboygan, Wis.) with names like Lou Re Dessert Plate and Bachman gymnast Overdrive Side Dish. Hand-painted vitreous china was used for Harley-Davidson Tray Table, a Rococo-revival confection upon casters that sat on a faux-Savonnerie carpet titled Fallen Angel, which featured a large felt image from a L Zeppelin album.

Otterson's interest in the decorative arts is almost scholarly. He worn out much time in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam researching a Baroque bed in the phraseology of Daniel Marot for his previous installation, in 1990 relations to the French designer harvest up again in this present to view in Daniel Marot Serving Tray, which ball of threads us in to the fact that Otterson's appropriations of Rococo ornament are explicit. In particular, his use of purple and virid for the glazes of the porcelain and for the patchwork upholstery of the bathtub-love seat and chaise longue downstairs has an echt French provincial appeal. on the other hand a voracious, all-American infantilism is also put in mind ofed by items like Wet and Wild, view and Barbie Fireplace Chenets (exhibited at organ of sight level, as in a museum), which are cast-brass appropriations of mass-produced dolls; Otterson is working sum of two units sides of popular taste, just as Cindy Sherman did in her Sevre porcelain service.

Darker metaphors also vapored "The Iron Maiden." The plastic art of Venus can be seen as a glowering femme fatale, a reincarnation of the Tannhauser tradition in which the have affection for goddess is portrayed as a temptres The Karen Carpenter iconography (not to mention the early deaths of many of the stone stars commemorated in the plates) also hints at a cautionary pathos. flat the G.I. Joe Candelabras and Muscleman Fruit can be interpreted as codfished homoerotic references and possibly, in this connection as allusions to AIDS. Finally, the controversial use of fur and otter in particular, insinuates a bizarre self-portrait of the artist as a flayed corpse lying in the bathtub. With its hypnotic fusion of redneck and Rococo comforts, "The Iron Maiden" was thus spellbinding that I was loath to leave this faintly ghoulish salon gathering.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group