Mandy Greer

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time

Sept. 2 – 24, 2000 

Location / 1205 E. Pike

From a review by Frances DeVuono, Artweek, November 2000:

For Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time at the SOIL gallery, Greer installed her sculptures with the attention of a set designer. Upon entering the basement space, one is immediately confronted by a pale, peach wall with cloth-covered ostrich-like legs sprouting far out from its surface. The object's uncanny balance alone is of engineering interest. With the long legs ending in a preposterously brilliant collection of feathers, colored an even more saturated peach and pink. Titled With Love & Squalor, a turquoise branch is situated next to this form, hoisting a collection of pods made from orange nylon fabric; more pods spill forth onto the floor. The associations are so mixed (humor and camp, with a smidgen of social imitations) that the piece is at once as funny and uncomfortable as an early John Waters film.

In the center is a bear whose fur body seems a little worse for the wear. Titled Jude, the stuffed and slightly sickly-looking bear stands human-sized on a foot-high circular pedestal. Its long teeth and claws are covered in sparkles and he wears a circus collar. Once again, taking charge of the space, Greer has painted a decorative circle of pink on the wall behind the bear.

In Flying Bud, another branch shape is covered in pink gingham. This one extends outward several feet parallel to the floor and ends in a small bush of gray-black feathers. Greer somehow manages to turn the campiest of images into sensual forms over and over again. In the far back is a white horse made of muslin. His genitals consist of two lace bags trimmed with clear glass beads.

In constructing representations of nature (animals, tree branches) out of all kinds of materials (muslin, leather, synthetics), Greer plays with the nexus between nature as sublime ideal and how we as people manipulate that ideal. But, like Mike Kelley's work in the mid-eighties, Greer's best work taps into something much more immediate. Her stuffed animals with their painted nails and her artificially colored botanical pieces laced with sly sexual insinuation become both ominous and seductive at once. She seems to be exploring the shadowed underbelly of innocence, childhood play, and even banality. It is a psychological investigation, not necessarily new, but worth revisiting periodically, and it is a pleasure when it is done so well.