Nicole Cherubini
Elwyn Palmerton
The curators of the Whitney Biennial missed an opportunity when they didn’t put one of Nicole Cherubini’s sculptures outside of the screening room for "Gore Vidal’s Caligula." Their complementary takes on gaudy opulence–equating American pop cultural excess and kitsch with the decadence of a declining empire–would have strengthened the show’s political thesis.
And Cherubini’s sculptures are about kitsch, excess and opulence. Each one is a ceramic vessel, lusciously glazed, on a custom made plinth. The ceramic part is shaped by hand from flat little clumps (rather than spun on a wheel) and glazed in translucent colors with metallic silver and gold highlights. They’re adorned with kitschy bric-a-brac including gold chains, rabbit’s fur, costume jewelry and ceramic lions’ heads. The individualized plinths are an integrated part of each sculpture. They range in materials from haphazardly stained wood or Plexiglas to a stack of thick blue foam insulation panels. Little ceramic loops stick out off the sculptures in places, vertically aligned, reminiscent of teacup and coffee mug handles, linking her material to its contemporary and historical uses.
Cherubini’s physical involvement in the whole process is tangible. They seem to examine, from the inside, the tools of seduction and to delight in every stage of their creation. "How much is too much and is that even enough?" they seem to ask. You can almost feel her deciding just how much deliquescent turquoise is exactly right. The scintillant effects contrast with the subtleties of fingers in clay. Formally similar to Giaccametti’s sculptures (if the polar opposite in temperament), she’s interested in how a piece of clay can catch light, how this can define a form without outlining it directly, and how color, translucence and opalescence can complicate these effects. The areas of bare red or white clay and rough-hewn plinths seem exactly right too, a necessary, visceral counterpoint to the sensuous glazes.
The combination of signifiers of wealth, status and gauche, nouveau riche aesthetics, placed into the gallery context is funny and self-effacing. They call to mind Dave Hickey’s line "Bad taste is real taste while good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege." Cherubini’s sculptures suggest that tastefulness, tameness and restraint may be the predominant characteristic of a lot of new art. The avoidance of gross signifiers of wealth may be, paradoxically, what makes most (art-world) art marketable. Her sculptures self-consciously approach an untapped vein of kitsch that seems almost inherently status, money or value driven, but they also allow that any "taste" is recourse to a notion of beauty–to a false absolute–and a potential marketing strategy.
This is underlined by references to three 80s artists: Haim Steinbach (the customized plinths), Jeff Koons (kitschy ceramic knick-knacks), and Allen McClellan (in her sculptures formal resemblance to his iconic urn form). Still, Cherubini’s work isn’t Pop, Minimalism, merely kitschy, or a preachy commentary on mass-production. It’s more akin to other (mostly young) artists’ work: Mike Bouchet’s celebrity Jacuzzis, David Altmejd’s werewolves or Jon Torreano’s gemstones, for example–art as a satire of luxury commodity forms which acknowledges its own commodity status.
Rather than flaunting austerity or rigor, invoking guilt, or battering you with the familiar symbols of capitalist or corporate excess, they offer seduction and humor as an alternative or, possibly, an inoculation against the meretricious aspects of our culture or capitalism. They’re also honest. By presenting neither "art for art’s sake" nor art as a demonstration of political correctness, they embrace the contradictory demands of artists’ real life; selling art isn’t selling your soul. At a time when "the market" is routinely invoked by critics, often with a polemical or generational bias, the possibility that art could be a commodity and sustain itself on those terms is actually inspiring. By flirting with the ostentatiously crass, and taking obvious pleasure in its materials, Cherubini’s art only risks being pleasurable, entertaining and complicated.
