Installation of Amy Bessone at GAVLAK Gallery
Ah, feminism. I first fell for you in college and we’ve been together ever since. You were on my mind when I strolled into Amy Bessone’s show, In the Century of Women, on view through March 5, 2016 at Gavlak Gallery, where viewers witness a variety of feminine portrayals that are arranged in a gallery space, circling around one another in unclear ways. The artwork in the show reminds me of both essentialist female film and media archetypes a la Cindy Sherman, and that more voluptuous female form that we remember from the days of Modernism. Does a show about women’s bodies and images a feminist show make? No, it does not. Feminism, I thought this show was about you, but I was mistaken.
It’s easy to call this show “feminist” based on the fact that the photographs are of women; the artist is a woman; and the sculptures littered throughout the gallery are busts of womens’ torsos. (Lest some archetypal masculinity is left out of the mix, we see a variety of Magritte-like pipes on the ground, all of which are untitled.) There’s also a fourth arguably feminist element of this mixed-bag show: discarded images of divorcees from newspaper archives (1930s-70s). There’s no real reason any of these elements have come together. It’s not interesting that they are so loosely connected, either; in fact, the vagueness therein is boring.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/954915-vague-exploration-femininity-amy-bessones-solo-exhibition-century-women#JCemVWFjGxo1dQhE.99
