Don’t Let the Boys Win: Kinke Kooi, Carrie Moyer, and Lara Schnitger
On-view through December 9, 2007
5000 MacArthur Boulevard
Oakland, CA 94613
510.430.2164
This is the first exhibition curated by Jessica Hough in her new position as director of the Mills College Art Museum. She was previously curatorial director at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum where she worked for over nine years.
Each of the artists in Don’t Let the Boys Win produces work that is imbued with an empowered female perspective. The title of the exhibition, borrowed from a sculpture of the same name by Lara Schnitger, highlights the provocative playfulness of the work, which shares a common use of humor, eroticism, and ornament.
In her drawings on paper and photographs, artist Kinke Kooi, based in Arnhem, Netherlands, imbues such things as a flower, a hand, or an ordinary apartment building with a talisman-like quality and humorous eroticism. In many of her drawings, she fills the space around the objects with a dense line pattern that gives the atmosphere a pillow-like effect.
New York-based Carrie Moyer balances specific Feminist references and tropes in her paintings with references to the history of abstract painting. In her work, she re-claims a history often associated with male painters by rooting her abstract forms in the female body.
The sculptures of Los Angeles-based Lara Schnitger have an animated physical presence that is reinforced by provocative titles such as Fun Bags, Show me your flower, and The Only Bush I Trust is My Own. Each work is composed of a sewn fabric “skin” stretched tightly over an irregular wooden armature. The tension on the fabric reveals the structure underneath, like the details of a body evident beneath tight clothing.
Also on-view is Laleh Khorramian: Surface to Air, an exhibition of two video animations by this New York-based artist making her west coast debut. Khorramian’s work of the past ten years, primarily drawing and painting, centers on theater and the spectacle to explore aspects of human nature, emotional states, and the vast potential of drawing as a medium.
Artist Lecture: Carrie Moyer, October 17, 7:30 pm
Museum Hours:
Tuesday-Sunday 11-4pm
Wednesday 11-7:30 pm
Monday closed.
Admission is free.
