FEMME FATALE
FEMME FATALE
May 20 - June 21, 2020
at FAIR | NADA
presented by Kunstraum LLC
Artists: Carla Gannis, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Nadja Verena Marcin and Susan Silas
"Daenerys as the Mad Queen is strictly a male fantasy that expresses patriarchal ideology with its fear of a strong political woman. The finale not only fits into patriarchal themes most women would recognize from their daily lives, but there’s another disturbing ideology at play that echoes modern politics."
Žižek on Game of Thrones
FEMME FATALE explores how the contemporary female protagonist becomes a heroine but remains suspended between disbelief and scrutiny on the larger stage of a patriarchal world framework. Setting up women's success narratives for tragedy and downfalls - in the truest sense fatal endings. A smart and alluring woman with a strong voice and character is eyed as manipulative, implausible and often as having evil intentions, whereas the same attributes are only seen as positive for a male successor of the same leading role. Our exhibition can be seen as an anti-manifesto, an attempt to remove the sense of guilt from the act of female domination.
The New Art Dealers Alliance is hosting FAIR from May 20 – June 21, 2020, a new art fair initiative designed to be online, function cooperatively, and act as a benefit for its community of galleries and artists. FAIR offers an alternative profit-sharing model, structured to facilitate mutual support within the art industry, and provide revenue to each of its participants during a time in which galleries have temporarily closed their physical locations. A percentage from each sale made from FAIR will be merged into collective pools for both participating galleries, and artists to then be evenly distributed among each group. A small percentage of each sale will go towards supporting NADA.
Works presented at FAIR:
2018
19 3/4” x 30"
Inkjet print on Slickrock Metallic Silver 300 gsm Moab paper
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
The photograph AGING VENUS is derived from a contemporary iteration of classical sculpture using the artist’s aging body as a model. The preparation for the creation of this sculpture began with a 3D scan, realized through photogrammetry. The rendered file used to produce the sculpture is photographed in Maya as if it were a model, generating a set of 2D self-portraits, whose iconic value remains intact, while its function as an index becomes less certain. As such, the photographic portrait straddles the line between digital photography and post-photography or simulation technology, living in an ambiguous interstitial space.
2015
51.19 x 66.5 inches C-Print, Kodak Archival Edition 2 of 3 + 1 AP
The photograph, Bride, was taken in the Salar de Uyuni - with around 10,000 km² the largest salt desert in the world. The artist presents herself in a blood-red wedding dress, the color spreads out in the water, a seemingly endless, surreal landscape. Bride deals with the myth of marriage in all its dichotomies - from a festive ceremony to an economic act, from fertility to transience. The red-colored white dress expresses the existential aspects of femininity and corporeality, of creation and fertility, of guilt and suffering. For example, a high percentage of marriages worldwide are still associated with physical violence. Marcin, however, is less of a victim than the protagonist.
2017-2018
3D printed polyamide with copper plating, smart phone, generative custom software (color, sound), Internet connection, pedestal, plexi vitrine
5 x 10 x 13.4 inches, 54.75 x 14 x 17.5 inches (including pedestal and plexi vitrine)
Origins of the Universe references both Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde (1819) and the contemporary fad of 3D printing holders for smartphones. Here a nude woman lies on a bed with wrinkled sheets covering her face. An iPhone positioned between her thighs. For the iPhone content, Eric Rieper and John Soat of Point in Passing produced a custom version of wwwwwwwwwwwww.xyz, a web app which pulls from the passive content of YouTube to create a real-time stream of uploaded videos. A number of keywords related to "origins of the universe" have been programmed into the app, continually cycling content onto the screen of the iPhone.
17 x 22 x 1 inches
Folded and Collaged Archival Print
2019
AP 1/2
Ingapirca #7 is part of the series Sacred Geometry (Geometria Sagrada)- sculptural photographs in which photographed Inca rocks become part of new narratives as the artist cuts, folds, and collages them into new contexts that suggest the white cube (gallery), the cosmos and modernist art. By layering these rocks onto her body, Skvirsky references performance photography and simultaneously embeds herself into pre-Colombian history.
Artist's Bios
Examining the arc of Susan Silas’s career over the past two decades, it is evident through large scale projects like Helmbrechts walk, or an exploration of the three-hour life span of the mayfly on the Tisza River in Hungary or sex over 50, to more recent works in post-photography, digital sculpture and motion capture; her work examines the meaning of embodiment, the index in representation, and the evolution of our understanding of the self over time. She is interested in the aging body, gender roles, and the potential outcomes of the creation of idealized selves through modern technologies and artificial intelligence.
Nadja Verena Marcin explores psychology and human behavior via an intersectional analysis of feminism and emotional architecture. Her works have been shown worldwide at Fridman Gallery (NY), ICA Philadelphia (PA), Garage Museum (Moscow), and ZKM Museum (Karlsruhe). Marcin won grants by New York State Council for the Arts, Franklin Furnace (NY), Film- und Media Foundation (Düsseldorf). She holds a Fulbright and an MFA from Columbia University, has lectured at Wellesley College (MA), Int. Center for Photography (NY),and has beenreviewed in HuffPost, Hyperallergic and Artnet News.
Carla Gannis is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She produces virtual and physical works that are darkly comical in their contemplation of human, earthly and cosmological conditions. Gannis’s work has appeared in exhibitions and projects across the globe. Recent projects include “Portraits in Landscape,” Midnight Moment, Times Square Arts, NY and “Sunrise/Sunset,” Whitney Museum of American Art, Artport. Publications who have featured Gannis’s work include Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, El PaÍs and The LA Times, among others.
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is a multidisciplinary artist that works mainly with photographs, video, and performance. She participated in the Cuenca Biennial and the São Paulo Biennial in 2010 and has received multiple grants including Anonymous Was A Woman (2019), NYFA (2019), NALAC, (National Association of Latino Arts and Culture) 2018, and the Jerome Foundation (2015). Her work can be seen in fairs such as Frieze NY, ARCO Madrid, NADA Miami or Parc Lima and her work is included in the following collections: Urbes Mutantes, Valzuela, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as numerous private collections.
Address: Kunstraum LLC, 20 Grand Ave, Space 509, Brooklyn, NY 11205
Hours: Thu - Sat 12-6 PM by appointment only – please contact us first!
Contact: Sarah Sloan, sarah@kunstraumllc.com
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram @kunstraumllc, #Kunstraumllc