The group exhibition Manifesto is presented as part of Fashion at FIAF 2013, an institute-wide celebration of one of the things the French do best, although the artists included – Ellen Berkenblit, Haley Mellin, Lola Montes Schnabel, Olympia Scarry, and Ena Swansea – veer more towards the other two national accomplishments in their variously culinary and erotic handling of materials. Ena Swansea is a voluptuous case in point with her good-enough-to-eat slatherings of snowy surface in the just-shy-of-nine foot high he wrote the lyrics while skiing, 2013. The artists aren’t French, the guest curator, Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis, is a German princess and the link to fashion is limited to the fact that her highness selected the artists for a feature article in Vogue, and yet somehow the show does feel both fashiony and French in its erotics of surface and support. DAVID COHEN
Ena Swansea, he wrote the lyrics while skiing, 2013. Oil on graphite on linen, 104 x 104 inches. Courtesy of the Artist
Manifesto remains on view at fi:af, 22 East 60th Street, between Madison and Park avenues, until April 20