NEW YORK, NY.- Muriel Guépin Gallery presents "No Woman, No Cry", a group exhibit featuring three women artists who respond to questions of what it means to be a woman today and how they cope with what's commonly expected from them. Their hand-made and manipulated miniature sculptures transcend the quietude of their scale with an exacting consideration for realism that calls attention to every stitch and surface. Using miniaturization to make a statement, they touch on the theme of feminine craft as art. Tense under glass or in boxes, these dainty domestic vignettes are definitely the musings of contemporary women.
Anne Mourier’s Long Boxes series explores the “psychology of routine domestic behaviors in our lives. With repetition comes comfort,” the endless round of housekeeping tasks is seen by her as a parade of objects, while soothing and perhaps satisfying it “…can also breed a sense of confinement and entrapment.” As the horizontal “dimensions of these sculptural shadowboxes,” with their disparities of scale, constrict to tightly encase the exaggerated processions of miniature household items - they limit our perceptions and ideas to fit the familiar. For the most part domestic tasks remain a women’s responsibility on top of everything else.
Holly Laws' subjects are tiny hand-stitched and incredibly detailed vintage garments. With Cage Crinoline, white hoop skirts are presented under glass domes. Untrimmed threads left where the cotton-wrapped steel hoops attach to the twill tape make the object rather skeletal and ghostly. In stark contrast to the crinolines that are almost floating in their dome is the heaviness of tiny dark colored mourning dresses from the 1860s, Laws’ latest addition to her series. More than emphasizing the theme of fashion, constriction and/or societal conventions, these bodiless miniatures question our rituals of mourning and ultimately healing.
Carmen Lozar’s Couture series, rendered in flame-worked glass, is made of small hanging garments and accessories that tell stories of famous lovers; Napoleon and Josephine, Cleopatra and Antony, Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Using figures and objects that represent stereotypes of femininity, or signature items belonging to literary characters, she creates meticulously crafted scenarios in baroque settings based on archetypal tales. Lozar identifies with these stories and states that; ”… objects are key to the understanding of our foundations…and have the ability to ground us, a physical shape to grasp while our minds are momentarily freed…” The mythical lovers she has selected have stories of grand passion that often end tragically, emphasizing an unattainable romantic ideal. No one lives happily ever after.
This exhibition is on view from April 1 until May 3, 2015.
