Lauren Kalman – Dress Up Dress Down

Received in direct email. Ms. Kalman’s webpage can be found here: http://www.laurenkalman.com.

     The imaged body iconizes the human form. The imaged body denies physicality; it is complete, a continuous surface, and an infallible skin. It preaches the virtues of visually perceptible self-perfection. Imaged bodies are idols to model the self.

          But the physical body is both transgressive and can be transgressed. It spills, tears, infects, expands and contracts through the skin. Our subconscious self can also penetrate the controlled façade. In spite of our conscious desire to emulate iconic ideals our personality quarks, flaws, and social deviations twitch their way to visibility.

 

         As a model for the physical body the image is deceptive. Imaged bodies are designed, manipulated and static, qualities that the living human form resists. Attempts to emulated images are often futile. We rarely achieve the perfect body, balance socially inscribed gender rolls with capitalistic career goals, or obtain the advertised promise of unadulterated happiness.

 

         Dress Up Dress Down is an installation of videos, objects, and audio that investigates the transgression of the physical body despite attempts to mold it. The videos in the installation progress through a series of physical activities with no recognizable purpose or resolution. Through out the piece a female figure is dressed in either in a white dress or suit. These costumes serve as multiple personalities, each attempting to achieve a goal that is gender specific. The actions begin as absurd even playful. As the piece progresses these gender divides break down, as does the white facade of clothing, skin is revealed, fluids are spilled, and gender is blurred. There is a final attempt to control the transgression of the body, but the result is erasure of the individual and inevitably the demise of the self.

 

         This progression is loosely modeled off of the alchemic goal of ultimate material and spiritual purity, with the intermediate phases of a hermaphroditic state and of mortification, the destruction of the element in order to be reborn. This is mirrored in a color shift in the work from white, to red (rust) and white, to red.

 

         The objects in the work follow the videos through state changes and reflect medical processes of research, diagnosis, and prescription. They begin as skeletal specimens of study, desire, and mimicry, which also foreshadow bodily destruction. Biological samples jars and microscopes, and then medicine bottles and the iconic mortar and pestle follow the specimens. The final group of objects are a set of mortuary tables in the shadows of the most remote space, present, but not announced.

 

         Set aside from the rest of the space is a room with two speakers. They emanate the rhythmic pounding of springs with an intermittent twang as they shift. The table with the speakers is illuminated in the dark room. The audio is ambiguous in its origin and has the uncomfortable tendency to sound like bedsprings. It is not until the viewer turns to leave the space that they might recognize a small trampoline in a dark corner. The action represented in the audio, as throughout the installation, is perpetual, with dark undertones, and with an ambiguity that is never entirely resolved.