Exhibitions, Spring 2010

Janine Antoni
At Home in the Body
March 16 - June 13

		Janine Antoni Host, 2009 Digital C-print; diptych, each image: 22 x 17 inches; each frame: 25 6/16 x 18 6/16 x 1 3/4 inches Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York
		Janine Antoni Artist Talk March 18, 6 pm Campbell 153

Janine Antoni carefully articulates her relationship to the world, giving rise to emotional states that are felt in and through the body. The artworks in this exhibition invite the viewer to feel the physical presence of the artist and to come to know her intimately.

Tender Buttons invites the viewer to imagine wearing her nipples cast as solid gold broaches. Conduit, another metal apparatus that is fashioned for the body, allows a woman to urinate standing up. In the exuberant image of the artist using the gargoyle shaped Conduit to pee off the Chrysler building, the wind appears to give her a man's beard or a lion's mane. In Host and Lattice another creature has come into contact with her body. A spider has built its trap in the kitchen, the appropriate place to wait for your dinner. In Tangent the artist balances on a police barricade bearing the text "Police Line Do Not Cross". She teeters there in order to question the law's ability to control her physical movement. Her form has been shrouded in a cowhide in a sculpture entitled Saddle. In Momme she is veiled again, but this time by her mother's dress. In a touching gesture of reciprocity, Antoni captures one of the first times her daughter feeds herself. In the photograph One Another her daughter reenacts the umbilical cord, returning her mother to her fetal memory. Umbilical articulates a gesture between the artist and her mother. The solid silver spoon morphs into the shape of the interior of the artist's mouth at the bowl of the spoon and into the impression of her mother's hand at its handle. Caryatid is a photograph of the familiar image of a woman balancing a vessel on her head, but this version has been turned upside down. The actual vessel broken into shards sits in front of the photo; the vessel now contains its broken parts. We follow Antoni's body from her home and family, to the animal kingdom and out into the cityscape. Through this intimate journey we are brought into relationship with our own bodies as a shared experience of the human condition.

The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of Luhring Augustine, NY, The Stanley Family Fund, Albemarle Magazine and the Hook.