Friday night I was honored to be able to attend the opening of the “Passion” Lesbian group art show, which was part of the Fresh Fruit Festival at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery at 26 Wooster St., NYC. It runs through July 25, Tue-Sat, 12 Noon – 6:00 PM and if you are in or around the NYC area, please do stop by. I spent some time that night talking with people about Rica’s art and taking pictures of them interacting with it. I invited them to visit this blog and see those pictures and copy them for themselves. Hopefully, we will be able to print them off and post them around the art itself in the gallery. Thanks to everyone who let me take a picture of them!
Rica’s art is about fluidity of identity, of gender and race. It’s about how people treat us certain ways because of what is on our outside and sometimes we can only show a little about who truly are inside. She invites everyone to be someone new, something new, with her energetic and cheerful interactive art. Her exhibit consists of three pieces – two that hang and are double sided, and one stationary on the wall. The hanging pieces depict a black woman/white man, an asian intersexed person/white intersexed person and the wall piece is a black intersexed person. The two hanging pieces were carried in this year’s Heritage Pride parade. The pieces are all for sale.
Please click the photos below to see a larger version
Have to ask – how, exactly, is this art? It has all the technique and skill of gum-ball machine stickers.
@anon … questioning the technique and skill of the figures used in the art poses the question of whether those figures are fine craftsmanship.
If the art lies in the interaction of people imagining themselves into a different body … finer craftmanship of the figures would surely undermine the art.
Rica’s art is much more difficult to execute that you’d guess by its apparent simplicity but, more importantly, who is to say what is Art and what is not? Art, like beauty, is totally a personal thing.
Rica’s art is much more difficult to execute that you’d guess by its apparent simplicity but, more importantly, who is to say what is Art and what is not? Art, like beauty, is totally a personal thing.
Oh dear. Whenever I hear the “Who’s to say question” I want to answer with the response “I am”. After all, if someone can’t set their own standards, they’re better off accepting mind.
That would be cheap. I go along with Arnold Bennet wrote, that ones artistic taste has to pass the bar of the classics. If you don’t appreciate, say, Hobbes’s prose, or Vermeer’s painting, it’s you who are wrong, not they.
There are standards of ability, and integrity.
Crud, I sound like I came here looking for a fight. I didn’t; I enjoy Okazu a great deal, I just don’t like the art.
@Anonymous – I get to decide what I consider to be art. You get to decide for you. You don’t get to decide for me, or anyone else. That was the point I was making with my “who’s to question.” In otherwords, your desire to see a certain thing does not *actually* qualify you to make your requirements the standard for “Art.”
If you don’t like Rica’s art, you’re well withing your rights. I don’t like Rothko or Vermeer myself. Rica is classically trained, by the way.She does Pop Art and there’s a darn good chance that you could not replicate her style as easily as you think you can (and if you cannot draw at all, well then it’s even more ridiculous.) You’re welcome to hate her work. I admit, though, I wish you’d do it elsewhere.