(un)common threads
Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
24 West 57th Street
New York City
(212) 247-0082
May 23 – July 31, 2008
By SANDRA
SIDER
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Faith Ringgold [left] Weeping Woman #4 1973-89, raffia, beads, appliqué and gourds, 67 x 23 x 3-1/2 inches and Anne Ryan Untitled 1952, collage with fabric and paper, 35 x 27 inches, both images Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
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This alluring exhibition of two dozen works by fourteen women opens with a dynamic sequence of three-dimensional pieces by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Yayoi Kusama, Nancy Grossman, Magdalena Abakonowicz, and Lenore Tawney. The back wall is anchored by the rippled, wrinkled, bulging textiles in Grossman’s Concerning a Drowned Girl, 1974, while Tawney’s fragile floor-length Untitled [MR55], c. 1960, and Chase-Riboud’s monumental Untitled: Pushkin, 1985, are placed like sentinels near the entrance. The rough yet intricate jute surfaces of Cercle Clair, 1971, by Abakonowicz, on the wall to the right of Concerning a Drowned Girl, pulls the viewer in for a closer look.
Turning around, we are then confronted by Faith Ringgold’s Weeping Woman #4, 1973-89 to the left, and Betye Saar’s Blend, 2002, to the right, the two works separated by the gallery’s entranceway and initially facing the viewer’s back. They deal with racial politics in vastly different approaches, both incorporating a female face and form. Two other works by Saar in the show reiterate the pale commentary of Blend—mixed media collages on paper punctuated by machine stitching.
The gallery presented pieces by the three African-American artists in close proximity, perhaps to emphasize their singular individuality. Chase-Riboud’s Untitled: Pushkin has much more of a dialogue with Kusama’s Explosion Image A, 1997, than with the works by Ringgold and Saar. Chase-Riboud’s many strands of stately muted silk, drawn into numerous knots, projects a subtle tension that balances the tortured rhythm of Kusama’s gleaming fabric tubes. Explosion Image A demonstrates the brute energy of Kusama’s genius without the diversion of a dotted surface.
Smaller works in this section include three collages by Hannelore Baron, notably the haunting 1975 War Letter on rough linen, and Twelve Portraits, 1976, by Claire Zeisler. Each “portrait” consists of crocheted borders surrounding hair-like woolen fibers—shrunken heads in an eerily decorative context. The flat, smooth texture of the leather background, into which the crocheted threads are sewn, highlights the textured fibrous mass. Instead of being presented close together in a unified rectangle (as they are on the gallery web site), the twelve Plexiglas boxes are spaced in a horizontal format, encouraging viewers to move back and forth to compare them.
Another, smaller room begins with Lesley Dill’s Blossom, 2007, hand stitched through thin black rubber with a wittily incongruous organza edge. Annette Messager’s Two Replicants Together, 2006, leans against the corner, with dunces’ caps topping sewn, stuffed fabric bound in twine. Although the concept is appealing, this piece lacks the presence of her hanging installations. Mimi Smith’s 1973 Table and Chair of knotted black thread and tape measures graces the adjoining wall, while Abakonowicz’s mysterious Backward Standing Figure, 1987, faces the opposite direction. Lee Bontecou’s Untitled [MR3], 1960, dominates the room, its welded metal oculus suspended within taut blue jeans, belt loop and all. This room contains one of the stars of the show, Anne Ryan’s 1952 Untitled [MR4], a collage of fabric and paper. Its delicate pastels and sheer fabrics with frayed edges seem like remnants of half-formed thoughts, poised to speak in whispers. Like much of her work, it stills the soul.
The artwork in (un)common threads spans more than half a century of women’s works. This is the second such exhibition at the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, complementing their 1996 offering Fiber and Form: The Woman’s Legacy.
