REVIEW: “PRETTY UGLY”

Review by: Stacey Smith for The Artists Forum Magazine
Image: Bernard Buffet’s La Mort 5,1999
Edited by Jeremy Baumann for The Artists Forum, Inc.
GALLERY: Gavin Brown Enterprises & Maccarone Gallery: “Pretty Ugly” Exhibit

PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY IS PRETTY UGLY

NEW YORK, NY (Monday, July 28, 2008) We know many things about beauty. We know that it is merely an illusion and it is also in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is the hardest thing for humans to both speak on candidly and objectively. It varies in reality and in Pretty Ugly, the current exhibit now showing at Maccarone Gallery and Gavin Brown Enterprises. If the general public’s perception of beauty is warped, then Pretty Ugly’s perception is twisted.
Curator Allison Gingeras riddles us first with this question:
“When you wake up in the morning, walk into the bathroom, and look at yourself in the mirror–raising the toothbrush to your stinking mouth–do you feel pretty or ugly? Dried droop in the eyes of the beholder. That must really sting. Breathe through the pain. It’s alright. You are beautiful. It’s true. I saw your face in a crowded place and I don’t know what to do because I’ll never be with you.”
Whether or not Gingeras intends to drift unconsciously into James Blunt lyrics is superfluous, the question is simple. It’s the exhibition that is complex.
Upon entering the gallery, one is greeted by a not so discreet slab of polyester resin fiberglass. A piece entitled Aumukua by John McCracken has reflective qualities which makes one glance, primp, adjust and decide to move away from feeling pretty or ugly. In the small gallery it is hard not to ignore the violent shades of fluid red depicted in pig’s blood. One piece, Untitled (Pig’s Blood Blowjob) by Bruce LaBruce, is exactly what its title suggests: a man (by sexual reproductive organs only) with a pig head receives oral pleasure in a tiled room of recent slaughter. On an adjoining wall are the words: Death to Piss (Death to Piss by Karen Kilimnik) that drip on the canvas like the word, “redrum,” might have at Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel. Cory McCorkle’s jarred insides in Spiritual Midwife Rushery and Nan Goldin’s Unititled panty-less cesarean section photograph make this room’s undertones not really undertones at all, but blatant statements castrating the notion that beauty knows no pain. Beauty is bloody.
Moving into the main gallery, the theme shifts in the collection entitled, Ladies (albeit in namesake, not propriety). In Ladies, women are depicted in all their undressed, sexually hypocritical glory. The women want to be beautiful but exploit that beauty and expect a slap in the face. One piece in particular states loud and clear what the rest of the pieces in the room only hint at: In Equality in the Workplace, by John Currin sits a topless woman in the presence of her co-worker (Oh who are we kidding? He was definitely her boss). Her breasts perched atop the boardroom table as he tries to maintain the eye contact appropriate between the hours of 9 to 5. Another blatant display of female sexual extortion depicts a woman ostracized by her brothel sisters while she is pet by the headmistress. Probably the most stunning piece in the room is Bernard Buffet’s La Mort 5. It’s not just extravagant in size, but in emotion; A skeletal dignitary reduced, literally, to an emaciated state - perhaps in pursuit of conquering beauty. Her crown cannot make her feel beautiful.
Finally, on the west wall of the main gallery, the sexually explicit and deviant expressions continue. Hans Bellmer’s three-piece gelatin silver prints feature doll parts awkwardly fit together and abandoned, some reduced to pieces on the floor. In, La Poupee (Double Legs on Floor), some are twisted and strewn about a staircase. Albert Oehlen utilizes the same concept in his untitled piece where bald, undressed mannequins are lined up in the early stages of assembly, ready to be constructed and prepared for beautification. Pair that one with a few French Vogue covers from Guy Bourdin and you’ve got yourself one hell of a statement on the deconstruction and reconstruction of the portrayal of femininity and sexuality.
Perhaps it is the depths of beauty that are felt overall by Gingeras’ Pretty Ugly. Its overarching theme does not question beauty, but forces the notion (at times violently) that beauty has layers - ones we must cut through - and the exquisite pain in learning it is more than skin deep.
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Writer/Editor Stacey Smith is a twenty-something New York City transplant via Atlanta via “The Cereal Capital of the World” - Battle Creek, Michigan. Today, she is a copywriter at a NYC agency - a far cry from ripping open packaging on cereal boxes in hopes of finding a new toy. When she isn’t writing, she’s blogging. When she isn’t blogging, she’s reading blogs. And when she isn’t doing any of the above, she’s sleeping.

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