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Indepth Arts News:
"COME ON: Desire Under The Female Gaze"
2007-08-23 until 2007-10-27
The Warehouse Gallery
Syracuse, NY,
USA United States of America
The Warehouse Gallery of Syracuse University launches a bold new exhibition, COME ON:
Desire Under The Female Gaze, which focuses on the psychological, social, cultural and
political dimensions of desire, subjectivity and pleasure. COME ON presents an array of ideas, imagery and experiences on the topic of sexuality
from the perspective of women in their 20s through mid 30s. The artists in this exhibition
employ diverse media, including large-scale drawing, video installation, text work and
ephemeral sculpture. COME ON reveals what is not represented in popular culture and
provides a counterbalance to the ubiquitous imagery of sexualized female bodies
created for mainstream heterosexual male sensibilities.
In Poison, by Brooklyn artist Rachel Rampleman, rock star virility is deflated through real-
life testimonial. In a video viewable from a set of stadium bleachers, the artist's sister
Sarah describes her lifelong idolatry of infamous frontman Bret Michaels. The fantasy and
anticipation leading up to a weekend rendezvous are recounted in uproarious detail, as
well as her ensuing disappointment in the desired object’s sexual skills. As one critic writes,
"Sarah is brilliant. If she's this good at talking, she needs to write it down"1. Rampleman's
report punctures the myth of the adoring, anonymous female fan and the prowess of the
famous musician.
Rampleman has exhibited and screened at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, Wexner Center for
the Arts in Columbus, Cynthia Broan Gallery and NYU Cantor Film Center in Manhattan, and
ArtWorks Time Warner Cable Gallery in Cincinnati.
• Montreal-based Jo-Anne Balcaen creates oblique narratives with dictionary definitions
through intriguing juxtapositions. The word combinations chosen question the cultural
baggage assigned to language used to express emotions, uncovering the role of
language in the construction of gender. In addition to the text works in COME ON,
Balcaen will install a suggestive minimalist sculpture created out of balloons, which points to the commercialization of courtship, the inflated and insupportable expectations of
happiness, and the temporality of feelings.
Balcaen has exhibited at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Katharine Mulherin in Toronto, in Montreal at
Parisian Laundry, Joyce Yahouda, articule, and the Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University, as well
as unconventional sites like Salvation Army, an abandoned hospital, a library and on billboards.
• Brooklyn-based Juliet Jacobson's large-scale drawings evoke centuries-old Mannerist
painting through the use of ornate details, contorted compositions and irrational space.
These exquisite illustrations of intertwined male lovers are informed by the critical theories
of feminist and queer studies. With a symbol set deriving from the histories of art, religion,
and literature, Jacobson’s finely rendered works are meditations upon generation and
creativity, fragility, intimacy, love, mutuality, morality, identity, alienation and universality.
Jacobson has been included in exhibitions curated by Kiki Smith and Valerie Hammond in New
York and Rupert Goldsworthy in London. Her work was featured in the last issue of K48 Magazine.
Join the artists and curator Astria Suparak for a day of artist talks culminating in a tour
and reception with refreshments on Thursday, Sept. 20, at The Warehouse Gallery.
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