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THOMAS DEMAND

Thomas Demand’s exquisitely produced and compelling photographic tableaux seduce the viewer despite their apparent banal subject matter, including unexceptional interiors and architectural façades. Although devoid of
people, the images seem to resonate with an intense sense of presence, suggesting a sudden or violent departure. At the same time, there is an undeniably clinical and sanitized aesthetic to these photographs that belies
any possibility of human intervention. This incongruity subtly erodes confidence in the validity of the image, provoking a thorough scrutiny of each and every detail. Upon closer inspection, Demand’s color photographs of “real places” are found to be fakes. They are instead immaculately produced, three-dimensional cardboard and paper models made after photographs of significant cultural and political events culled from newspapers and other mass media outlets.
Although the photographic remains are what Demand exhibits, his primary concern is the sculptural process. Demand’s labor-intensive practice entails the fabrication of full-scale environments. The model’s progress is
continually checked through the camera’s lens, which is set up in a permanent position during construction. Strangely troubling, these images of mundane settings and their prosaic titles provoke a sense of unease and
doubt–a strategy deliberately employed by Demand to delay recognition of the original referent’s narrative. Once discovered, there is no going back. The subtext of the photograph, which in turn is a rendition of an historical event, becomes inseparable from the image. In the case of Corridor (1996), this feeling is justified. On first glance, the depiction of a fluorescent-lighted hallway with unremarkable yellow doors is deceptively
bland, but perceptions undergo a radical shift when the viewer realizes that the corridor leads to the apartment of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Implied psychological or physical violence permeates many of Demand’s works and is often masked behind a kind of fastidious order. This can be seen in Archive (1995), in which shallow square boxes of equal size and color are seen arranged in a grid-like structure on shelves. The diagonal of a ladder ruptures the uniformity of the frame and signals a disturbance. The subtle impression of irregularity triggers the understanding that something is amiss: none of the boxes are labeled and the contents of one have been removed. Puzzlement turns to dismay, when the viewer realizes that the image pictured is a reconstruction of the archives of Leni Riefenstahl, whose film Triumph of the Will became one of history’s greatest propaganda victories.
Diving Board (1994), another work reflecting upon Germany’s malevolent past, is both monumental in stature and iconography. The isolated structure of the diving board recalls the spectacle and display of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, played out by classically proportioned Aryan youths to embody the omnipotence of the Third Reich. Power and the desire for world domination of a very different kind is the subtext of Corner (1996), which features a typical dormitory room with books and papers strewn across a desk in total disarray. The lack of organization suggests a sloppy and chaotic mind, but Corner is actually a recreation of Bill Gate’s room at Harvard where Microsoft was initially conceived.
These highly intelligent works function like ‘cleaned up memories’–sterilized and removed from context, yet vaguely familiar. While their impressive and artificial nature raise important issues about systems
of representation and the validity of photographic truth, their power lies in the disjunction between the object depicted and its connection to the history and hidden meaning inherent in the original. In this way they
resemble crime scenes where the viewer, much like a detective or psychoanalyst, is given a set of clues and is asked to decipher the narrative in reverse.

JANINE ANTONI

Janine Antoni is renowned for her aggressively physical sculptural process. Using her body in conjunction with a variety of banal materials–such as lard, chocolate, soap, and hair dye–Antoni performs actions that evoke a feminine domestic image. The art historical references evident in her work further serve to contextualize her feminist practice within a larger field of artistic production. Nowhere is this more evident than in Gnaw (1992), an early work that became a blueprint for much of her later practice.
Gnaw is comprised of two 600-pound cubes‹one of chocolate, the other of lard‹and a three-paneled, mirrored cosmetic display case entitled Lipstick/Phenylethylamine Display. Using her mouth as a tool, Antoni nibbled
the corners of both cubes, leaving visible teeth marks on the chocolate and facial impressions on the softer lard. The chocolate fragments combined with spit were recycled into immaculate heart-shaped candy trays, while the lard residue was combined with wax and bright red pigment to create 300 tubes of lipstick. The four distinct elements that make up Gnaw can be read as relics of a private ritual that trace the artist’s intimate engagement with all aspects of the work. Her actions evoke associations with infantile aggression and repressed libidinal desire, while the determined erosion of each cube can be seen as a reaction to the pristine production values and male-dominated practice of minimalism.
The transformed by-products of the chocolate and lard cubes highlight their intended significance. The relationship between heart-shaped trays and lipstick, aside from containing vast amounts of fat, points to the
manipulation of women’s desires by these ubiquitous signifiers (made more apparent by the association of chocolate with its psychoactive ingredient Phenylethylamine). The chewing and spitting out of the nauseating lard underscores these feminist concerns by simultaneously alluding to the binge/purge behavior associated with bulimia as well as the anxiety of conforming to narrow standards of female beauty. In its original
configuration at the Sandra Gehring Gallery, New York, this subtext became more evident as the cube of lard imploded and hemorrhaged on its marble plinth, lending an undeniably abject quality to the work.
The emphasis on performance and the use of the artist’s own body as both material and subject is clearly inspired by feminist art practices that emerged during the 60s and 70s, but not exclusively so. The physical
discomfort Antomi experienced while chewing the cubes–ulcers, blisters, and nausea–is equally informed by the performance/endurance work of Chris Burden and Paul McCarthy, both of whom emphasized process over product and tested the limits of endurance to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. Antoni’s masochistic tendencies have much in common with her contemporary, Matthew Barney. Both artists privilege process as epicenter, and indulge in psycho-sexual rituals to question the expectations and stereotypical nature of prescribed gender roles. While Gnaw reflects the active exploration of identity politics in art and culture of the early 90s, her work also embodies multiple art-historical references that encourage a re-reading of these earlier movements and their impact on current artistic practice.
Ultimately, Gnaw remains open-ended, demanding that the viewer re-imagine the process by which the work
was made, and in doing so, experience their own unique understanding of the work.

SARAH LUCAS

Quintessentially British, Sarah Lucas exploits the brash and sensationalist tactics of the tabloid press to explore issues of gender and representation within working-class culture. By translating vernacular slang into visual form, Lucas lays bare the underlying brutal and misogynist nature of this language. Originally exhibited together in 1992, Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab and The Old Couple articulate these concerns in a provocative and playful manner. Although willfully crude in their construction and use of materials, both works subtlety subvert this rawness by referencing Dada, Surrealism, and Pop. In Two Fried Eggs and a Kebab, Lucas evokes the female form using a second-hand table, a couple of fried eggs, and a pita bread stuffed with meat. This act of reducing women to debased and humiliated sex objects is made more apparent by the framed photo at the ‘head’ of the composition–re-contextualizing Magritte’s infamous painting, Rape (1934). The reduction of the body to junkyard parts is also evident in The Old Couple. In this case, both sexes are stripped down to their vulgar symbolic representations–a candle and set of false teeth–to sit on two wooden thrift-store chairs. These surrealistic props behave in oddly conflicting ways. Both the candle and false teeth are mournfully suggestive of bodily decay and a sense of loss, but also function as sardonic signifiers of potency: the candle acting as erect phallus, and the false teeth evoking the threat of castration.
Lucas also uses her own image as a tool to perform a masculine identity as means of self-empowerment. Refusing to conform to the narrow conventions of female beauty, she plays with an androgynous image that allows her to assume a relatively fluid, but always-powerful sexual identity. In Divine (1991), Lucas appears tough, “butch,” and sexy. She slouches with legs splayed open, aggressively goading the viewer. This subversion of stereotypical male and female roles projects conflicting images that are both threatening and seductive. A similar devise I employed in Eating a Banana (1990), in which Lucas, ambiguously dressed in a tough leather jacket, suggestively eats a banana while staring provocatively at the camera. Repositioning the woman as aggressor by alluding to castration, the image is both violent and sexual. In Receptacle of Lurid Things (1991)–a life-sized cast of the artist’s middle finger monumentalized on a tall pedestal–performs an abusive gesture, becoming a celebration of female strength and also of crude aggression. This “laddish” attitude is also evident in 1-123-12-12 (1992). Here Lucas references British skinhead culture by customizing a pair of her old Doc Marten boots with razor blades instead of toecaps. In these works, Lucas postures as “one of the boys,” invoking a masculine and working-class identity not so much as a form of judgment, but as a way to reclaim that attitude for herself, allowing for a more credible and truthful feminized agency.
The visible anger that drives these formative works is as much class-based as it is fueled by an investigation of gender and sexuality. By co-opting the class-specific language of tabloids, Lucas succeeds in communicating to the largest possible audience, while simultaneously revealing its sexist and fundamentally reactionary structure. This directness and uncompromising aggression is convincingly offset by the deployment of absurdist and typically British humor that avoids an overly didactic and critical position. The thematic, conceptual, and formal approaches contained within this early body of work have formed the basis of her current practice.

MOCA LOS ANGELES PUBLISHED APRIL 2001