Ava Gerber at fiction/nonfiction - New York, New York

The appearance of notwithstanding another generation of feminist artists is single of the most interesting features of the popular New York art scene. If '80 feminists of the like kind as Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman and Mary Kelly were preoccupied with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and returning the male gaze, the artists emerging in the '90 are les didactic in approach, protect to focus on the material substance and, given the current political situation, are replete of rage. Sometimes their work recalls that of earlier artists like Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Lynda Benglis and Hannah Wilke. Kiki Smith and the performance artists Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle mirror different aspects of this novel feminist esthetic; the street demonstrations of W.A.C. form into a body one of its corresponding political perspectives.

Like Finley and Sprinkle, Ava Gerber is an advocate of "sex positive" feminism who eschews "victim art" and cultivates a bad-girl reputation. In this, her first solo exhibit Gerber presented 27 sculptures evoking domestic labor and traumatic memories. Like Rona Pondick and Patty Martori, Gerber appear to bes partly inspired by Surrealism. The greatest in quantity successful works in the display were those which seduced the viewer from one side their formal beauty only to appear repugnant and abject on closer inspection. Her sculpture called of gold Shower, for example, consisted of 56 plastic baggies containing urine of varying colors suspended on lengths of yarn from a metal rod

A number of these statuarys used various items of women's clothing, especially underwear. (In last spring's assemblage show "Funny Ha-Ha or farcical Peculiar?" at fiction/nonfiction, Gerber wrapped the gallery's round pillars with panties signed by men with whom she'd had sex) ofttimes these articles of clothing were stiffened with a coating of wax that direct the eyeed like dried semen. In her Feast of Snakes, Gerber hung sum of two units pairs of underpants from the ceiling; the threads attached to them reached all the way to the floor. Carrot Top, which revolv in the air like more [i]or[/i] less perverse Calder mobile, incorporated a clothes hanger, another pair of underpants and a ring of rotting, phallic carrots overspreaded with wax. The use of various yarns, knitting needle laundry racks and bedding kept the make submissive of domesticity and "women's work" at the forefront.

Change the fastenings consisted of four stupendously lengthy hanging acrylic hairpieces, while another dangling assemblage of ribbons and string wrapped around metal, titled The Black vapor of Negativity and the Pink collection of vapor of Optimism, recalled both the Eva Hesse of the late '60 and Pollock's skeins of dripped paint. Also included in the display was a black-and-white photograph of the artist (in pigtails) having sex "doggie-style" with a black man and holding a "Happy Father's Day" balloon. The photograph was inscribed, "To Daddy, have affection for and Kisses, Ava." Frankly, I rest this piece gratuitous, its fall off against the father mere "acting-out" and its implications unpleasantly racist. Its inclusion was especially regrettable because it undermined the more interesting works upon display, like her Blouse Bag, a large flowered laundry bag with sum of two units partially deflated balloons, dipped in brown paint, dangling from the bag upon lengths of ribbon, and an unusual installation titled IV, which consisted of seven painted paper IV bags apparently floating in space and attached by means of lengths of ribbon to balls of dirt upon the floor.

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