Artists' Reception for Tara Daly & Laura Splan

Fri, Sep 9
7 - 10pm
free

From Saturday, September 3 through Sunday, September 25th, 21 Grand
presents an exhibition of two artists that address the visceral: Tara
Daly (sculpture) and Laura Splan, exhibiting new photography and
mixed media work.

Tara Daly creates fantastic objects that are both seductive and
disarming. Her choice of subjects varies, but they all refer to a
Freudian vision of the subconscious. Her medium of choice is plastic
(various forms of urethanes and styrenes) that lead to very seemingly
organic surfaces - perhaps carved ivory in one instance and moist
amphibious skin in another. Though she does create traditional
"discrete object" sculpture on occasion, her common presentational
idiom is objects arranged on the wall as a picture plane. A memorable
example of this is a number of pearlescent gray spermatozoa that
appear to be "swimming" around a drain grate (like you'd see in a
locker room shower) impossibly fixed in the corner of two walls. This
drain grate is a recurrent symbol in Daly's work: she intends it as
an insinuation of the subconscious' nature of latency, as if to say
that contained and disposed-of murk of subliminal desires and fears
lay just beneath - as fetid, impressive and primordial as the funk in
any drainpipe. As well as the piece mentioned above, Daly will be
showing two new works completed for this exhibition: a triptych
involving a porcelain-looking horse's head (complete with bridle
gear) flanked by two stylized urinals, and an array of fictional
insects mounted on a portion of wall engaging in various
interactions. The former is a continuation of an ongoing series
casually termed "things you put between your legs" that flirts with
the psychology of the fetishized object. The latter is effectively
modelled on the paintings of Breughel and Bosch. In its entirety,
this panoramic display of plastic insects engaged in various actions
surveys the foibles and tragedies of this mortal existence.

Laura Splan is interested in the ways that science portrays the
human body. Where Daly portrays objects that refer to biological
function by their intended use, Splan manipulates science's
portrayals of these actual functions. Often, she takes the standard
bio-science image and reframes it in a disjunctive way. A past
example of this, is a series of doileys she made using the shapes of
various virulent organisms as the basic design. Her work spans a
range of media, depending on the premise of any one piece. And more
recently her focus has been a fascination with bioscience's influence
on cosmetics (from surgical implants to skin peels). Her focus for
this exhibit will be a new series of photographs and video
installation utilizing close-up images of a wax skin-peal being
picked away. The photographs transpose medical diagrams and
illustrations onto actual skin undergoing this peal - a visual
conundrum of representing science's abstraction simultaneous to its
visceral referents. The video installation is three monitors showing
stages of the same peel visible only through small convex lenses
mounted on one wall next to two steel trays proudly displaying
swatches of peeled wax and skin: an ethereal reliquary to fetishized
beauty.

Venue:

21 Grand
416 25th St. (@ Broadway)
Oakland
510-444-7263
http://www.21grand.org

plenty of parking, 5 blocks from 19th St. BART Station
http://www.21grand.org/map.html

Additional Info: