|
|
| Michelle Handelman | Selected Works Biography Press Release |
| Cannibal Garden |
| February 19 - March 18, 2000
|
| Cristinerose Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Cannibal Garden |
| Handelman, known for her film and video work examining extreme female sexuality, expands the dialogue of desire with this investigation of self-gratifying, self-satisfying systems within nature. Using artifice as costume, Handelman transforms herself into an agent of mesmerizing desire; manipulating photography, sculpture and performance video animation to create a technogarden of hermaphroditic delights. Referencing science fiction and fairytales, through the use of scale and the impossible, the viewer is presented with an over-the-top, over-saturated cloning of nature that is so real it is beyond fake.
|
| Setting the backdrop for the exhibition is the Cannibal Flowers Series, 9 large-scale photographs continually feeding themselves from an intense reservoir of self-consuming beauty. Radiant and fantastic, the images devour the viewer with extreme corporeal sensation. Falling somewhere between microscopic insects, futuristic plant forms and frilly sex toys, these Cannibal Flowers are hybrids of digitally manipulated patterns of feathers with Rorschach-like structures. Through their many ambiguities the photographs open up a sexualized psychology between form and content, ingestion and expulsion, and symmetrical perfection.
|
| Handelman examines the single-minded pursuit of regurgitating pleasure through performative videos. The gallery is transformed into a technologized space, part dream and part carnal landscape through the projection of videos such as Candyland; Ponygal; Blowjob; and AlienDreamCord, which feature the artist in digitally animated, cybersexual devouring actions that resonate through a candy-colored lens. Human desire becomes mediated by technology, where the camera lens remains the ultimate object of affection, enhancing the artist's synthetic relationship to the organic.
|
| Suture takes the impossibility of fairytales and weaves it into the fabric of performance with sculptures of 8 feet tall sewing needles made out of solid aluminum, threaded with cascades of silver hair. The objects are both monuments to post-feminist actions and props in a personal positioning of the fetish.
|
| Michelle Handelman recently moved to New York City from the Bay Area where she worked for ten years as a filmmaker, writer, visual artist and performer. Her films, including the acclaimed documentary BloodSisters, have been widely screened internationally, and her visual art is part of several collections.
|