Slough
September 3 – October 5, 2013
45 North
Venice Boulevard
Venice, CA
L.A.
Louver is pleased to present an exhibition of new sculptures and drawings by
Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar. Through a complex and masterful use of evocative
materials, themes of racial struggle, cultural identity and the changing roles
of motherhood converge in this new body of work, all of which was created in
2013.
The title
for the exhibition Slough, is defined
as “a situation characterized by lack of progress,” or “to cast off or shed
dead skin.” It is this duality of meaning , and a sense of both impasse and
renewal, that pervades the 15 new works in the exhibition. In Shorn, a female figure carved from wood
and painted red shaves her hair using a shard of glass, leaving behind a bare
trace of stubble. The cut hair cascades from the figure’s hand, entwining her
legs and feet. This dramatic removal can be interpreted as a rite of passage,
or a cathartic act of mourning. In Pret-a-Porter,
two found suitcases rest on the floor; one is left slightly ajar to reveal the
uninhabited skin of a female figure, formed from translucent paper. Folded and
loosely packed, it’s unclear whether the skin has recently been shed or is
waiting to be donned. Pearly pays homage to Mademoiselle LaLa, the Black
Victorian acrobat made famous for her extraordinary athleticism. In a
death-defying act, the dark pearlescent figure (made from paper and foam and
burnished with graphite) hangs by her teeth tightly clenched to fabric
suspended from the gallery ceiling. The sculpture celebrates her strength,
while placing her vulnerability on display. The largest work in the exhibition,
Thistle and Twitch (Mombie), depicts
a larger-than-life female figure towering nearly 8 feet (2.4 m) tall, formed by
built-up layers of thin paper, with painted barren briars veining beneath the
skin’s surface. Massive in scale, yet delicately constructed, the viewer is
invited to peer inside her navel to find the hollow form filled with a thicket
of brambles. Captured in a transitory state, the figure appears to be exiting a
stage of fertility, or rather, experiencing a rejuvenation of new growth
following a period of dormancy. The title of this work borrows from Ovid’s Metamorphases and the mythological tale
of Demeter (the goddess of harvest) who is overcome with grief when her
daughter Persephone (the goddess of spring) was abducted by Hades and held
captive in the underworld.
“The stars and the winds assailed them; hungry birds gobbled the scattered seeds; thistles and twitch, unconquerable twitch, wore down the wheat.”
– Ovid’s Metamorphases
Greek
mythology is also referenced in Cotton
Eater, which alludes to the lotus-eaters, characterized in Homer’s Odyssey as a race of people entranced in
a perpetual state of apathy from the consumption of lotus fruit. The sculpture
portrays a small wooden figure set atop a pedestal, feeding on cotton balls;
its rounded belly visually full. An elongated cotton picking sack, filled to
the brim from harvest, is slung over her shoulder and extends beyond her small
frame and down to the floor. The piece relates to the history of slavery, and
the continued government practice of appeasing the poor with insidious gifts.
The imagery in this sculpture was first realized in Cotton Eater Study (sugar sack shroud series), a large drawing
measuring 81 x 37 in. (205.7 x 94 cm) rendered with charcoal and graphite on
found cotton sugar sacks. This and other drawings on cotton panels from the sugar sack shroud series are on view in
the exhibition, including Backwater Blues – which
Saar created in New Orleans during her fellowship at the Joan Mitchell
Foundation in April 2013. Dismayed by the lack of progress following the
tragedy of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Backwater
Blues illustrates a woman clothed in a sheer slip gazing back as water
rises above her ankles. Framed by a found screen door, the drawing sheds light
on the media’s voyeuristic coverage of the devastation following the hurricane,
where footage of victims often disheveled and undressed, were broadcast without
any regard for their dignity. In another work created in New Orleans, Morass, a severed head formed from
molded glass lays on its side soiled and lifeless, bearing the watermark of
floodwaters.
The
exhibition will also feature an installation of Saar’s sculptures Summer and Spring (both commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy in
2011) in the gallery’s open-air Skyroom, including a garden installation
courtesy of Rolling Greens Nursery, Los Angeles.
Alison
Saar was born and raised in Laurel Canyon, California. Growing up the daughter
of renowned artist Betye Saar and painter/conservator Richard Saar, played a
crucial role informing her formative years, as well as the development of her
artistic career. Saar received her B.A. in studio art and art history in 1978
from Scripps College, Claremont, California. She went on to earn her MFA from
Otis- Parsons Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design). She has received
three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984, 1985 and
1988), and was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
in 1989, the Flintridge Foundation Award for Visual Artists in 2000, and the
Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist Fellowship in 2013. In 2012, the United States
Artists Program named Saar one of 50 USA fellows.
Simultaneous
to the artist’s exhibition at L.A. Louver, Alison Saar: STILL… is on view at the David C. Driskell Center, University of
Maryland, 12 September – 13 December 2013.
Alison
Saar will be in conversation with Polly Nooter Roberts (Consulting Curator for
African Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), as part of the Library
Foundation of Los Angeles’ ALOUD
series: Body as Politics: Art, Identity
and Memory, on Tuesday, 24 September 2013, 7:15pm at the Mark Taper
Auditorium - Central Library, (reservations are recommended). More info at
www.lfla.org/aloud.
