| Manhattan and London are in a continuous discussion with art everywhere. Here in Chelsea NYC across the blocks we’ve got Emma Amos at Flomenhart, Manolo Valdes at Marlborough, Suellen Parker at Stux, and Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus in a group show at Deborah Bell, but appropriately visceral is the Orlan event, which occurred recently in London at Goldsmiths. For years Orlan has been cut apart on camera, fashioning herself to appear variously. Orlan’s talk is about what she calls “carnal art.” Unlike ‘body art,’ from which I set it apart, carnal art does not desire pain as a means of redemption, or to attain purification. Carnal art does not wish to achieve a final ‘plastic’ result, but rather seeks to modify the body, and engage in public debate. |  |
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig
Manolo Valdes, Arielle Sobre Fondo Azul, 2007. Oil on burlap, 90 x 74 inches. Copyright of Manolo Valdes. Courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.Manhattan and London are in a continuous discussion with art everywhere. Here in Chelsea NYC across the blocks we’ve got Emma Amos at Flomenhart, Manolo Valdes at Marlborough, Suellen Parker at Stux, and Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus in a group show at Deborah Bell, but appropriately visceral is the Orlan event, which occurred recently in London at Goldsmiths.
For years Orlan has been cut apart on camera, fashioning herself to appear variously. Orlan’s talk is about what she calls “carnal art.” Unlike ‘body art,’ from which I set it apart, carnal art does not desire pain as a means of redemption, or to attain purification. Carnal art does not wish to achieve a final ‘plastic’ result, but rather seeks to modify the body, and engage in public debate. Carnal art is not against cosmetic surgery but, rather against the conventions carried by it and their subsequent inscription, within female flesh in particular, but also male. Carnal art is feminist. That is necessary. It is interested not only in cosmetic surgery, but also advanced techniques in medicine and biology that question the status of the body and the ethical questions posed by them.” What do we talk about when we talk about ourselves? Orlan never flinches. The question is not, as so many interject, about an artist’s mental health, financial return, or any some such distraction.
Emma Amos says that her paintings and works on paper often reflect her history as an artist growing up in the segregated South, yet states that she is equally interested in the present and hereafter. This Falling series called Head First at Flomenhart Gallery, paintings, printmaking, quilting, and dangling figures constructed to fall off the main body of some works, while bearing witness to suffering is also joyful, and even humorous. A constantly producing painter, printer, master weaver, photographer, writer and teacher, Amos is an identity within the work itself—intellectually energetic, and one would imagine that she is certainly in the studio putting together more shows jammed with ideas and vitality.
Manolo Valdes: Recent Sculpture and Painting at Marlborough Chelsea is at first a jolt. These large works fill both floors of the prestigious gallery like a theater of gorgeous animals that are somewhat like women, flowers, the usual high sellers, but it’s their extravagantly brute nature that escalates them to a higher species than marketplace baubles. Sure, 300G’s is dropped here like so much sweet detritus, but this is a constructing friend of Tapies and Picasso inspired technically and in spirit, and Valdes is an artist who loves women almost as much as he loves the skin of art itself. The high color epidermis presented here in paint is not Caravaggio’s, but woven in shred edged burlap and slapped with muddy thick oils, and the bronzes with their points of metal flailing, while tough are not Medusas. Valdes gives us Deneuve instead, gorgeous in hot grime.
At Stux, right down the road, Suellen Parker’s Incurable Still, is a first show for a recent art school graduate. Goldsmiths set the context for so many students in recent years in London, where jump-starting artists hoped for quick returns and a career modeled on the YBA phenomenon. However, the YBA’s—contrary to popular suspicions and sour grapes—did have the talent if not the experience behind them of a Valdes, and they figured out the rest in short order. Parker also has something—these photographs of clay women and men already carved, lifelike figures digitally altered while being botoxed, primed for success, and manipulated in both form and demeanor, shriek over the ocean to Orlan.
There are so many shows of portraits and always one hopes the faces speak out of honesty for the real conditions we find ourselves in daily, particularly human in regard for fleshly fears and aspirations. Garry Winogrand’s New York at Deborah Bell Photographs was made in 1965, and Winogrand died in 1984. His leggy blond twists from the gaze of two men in a New York street, her look at the photographer is dark in shadow, hair made a veil. This woman’s purse and her shopping bag won’t protect her in the windy street. It’s her attitude that does. Diane Arbus’s photographs of tough-minded women look over the gallery floor at the Winogrand, and never lose the ability to contend. Between Amos, Valdes, Parker, Winogrand, and Arbus, all these women’s voices are unleashed, passionate, husky, shrill, coy, in your face, and yes, cutting.
