Kelly Reemtsen
saw her "I'm Not Falling For You" show and my male gaze fell head over chainsaw for her. her women are entirely subject to the male gaze; they don't have faces and the perspective focuses tightly from the shoulder to mid-calf on a white background. they're like mannequins in dresses, capturing the passively sunny dresses of a 1950's housewife, yet reflecting their fiery temperaments and perhaps indignant that they're stuck in a housewife role. her gardening tools look more like weapons, like a stepford wife gone manic. the contrasts she sets up confront issues of women and power, and she cleverly asserts a strong-willed independence in the new woman.
she has a deliciously rich impasto technique and uses the most sumptuous colors in her machinery, especially her candy colored dotted chainsaw blades (in person you can see dollops of paint). modeling with hue rather than black and white tones is one of my favorite shading techniques, and reminds me of Wayne Thiebaud's style. i'd get more into him, but i think i'll save him for another post. her white brushtrokes are controlled, but disorderly, perhaps referencing (and slightly subverting?) thiebaud's technique of horizontal and orderly white brushstrokes as the background to his works. she outlines her figures with white paint in the same way he does, too. some curators agree! they like to group their work together in exhibitions. and some curators don't like to make that parallel obvious and will put thiebaud's landscape work next to her feminist statements, don't you get it??
Three Machines (thiebaud) - Not Every Pill is Bitter
Two Kneeling Women (thiebaud) - unrequited
[via ADLER&CO, David Klein Gallery, Skidmore Contemporary Art]
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