Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999 Page: 59
60 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Andrea Caillouet
Ann Wood
UTSA SATELLITE SPACE
SAN ANTONIO
by Arend C. ZwartjesLike its title, Andrea Caillouet and Ann
Wood's exhibition Crush is a double-edged
signifier, referring at once to the flighty
romantic longings of youth, and to the sinister
wieldings of hegemony. Both artists, though
working in very different media and formal
styles, utilize this semantic acuity to create an
empowering feminist aesthetic that lures at the
same time that it punches.
Ann Wood uses faux fruit, rubber, beads,
rhinestones, thread, polycrylic and other
textural materials to create heaping conglomer-
ations of forms that jut precariously from the
wall. Relying on varying methods of pouring,
threading, and casting, Wood creates vividly
intense colors, full of swirls and gloss.
By far the most beautiful composition of
the group, Seen Not Heard best epitomizes the
sexual suggestiveness of all of Wood's sculp-
tures, while not falling prey to the cliches of
sexually loaded abstract sculpture. Composed
of carefully sewn-together faux calla lillies,
along with polycrylic, flocking, and cast
rubber, Seen Not Heard abounds with forms
reminiscent of both male and female genitalia,
a luscious synthesis of tradition-
ally polar extremes that seems
typical of Wood's ultimate
mission. Even in less sophisti-
cated compositions such as
Honey Pot-a mannequin pelvis
and upper thighs rammed into
the wall and soaked in gooey,
orangish rubber-this ability to
suggest sexuality while dispersing
with clear references to a "male"
or "female" form is definitely one
of Wood's forte's.
All of Wood's seemingly
pliant structures include plastic
forms, many of which are "fake"
materials, such as rhinestones,
synthetic grapes, apples, and
flowers. The rhinestones and
fake butterflies (in Butterfly
Kisses) especially seem to address an attempt to
locate an "authentic" femininity. But lumped
in such disturbingly messy piles as they are,
these symbols of kitsch elegance lose their
"pretty" tameness, and instead gain the menace
of rejected stereotypes. What is especially
rewarding about Wood's sculptures is that theyAndrea Caillouet
Rollercade, 1999
Video installation, 12' x 17' x 27'
Photo: Courtesy of the Artist
don't take obvious sides in what comes across as
a vicious, though muted, debate about femi-
nine identity. It is this combination of pure
visceral appeal and keen conceptual critique
that makes Wood's works so disturbing and
charming at the same time.
Andrea Caillouet's video installation
Rollercade provides a thoughtful contrast and
compliment to Wood's syrupy assemblages.
Rollercade consists of two looped videos
projected side-by-side from projectors on the
floor onto a curved back wall of the gallery.
The two images, floating against the curves of
the wall and on the gallery's floor, depict inte-
rior scenes of a darkened roller-skate rink. One
projector shows abstract images produced by
the rhythmic lights of the rink, while the other
presents the similarly lit floor of the rollercade,
as groups of young skaters roll by in hypnotic
repetition.
Because of its
acute sense of space,
the installation not
only displays the
-. actions of a typical
adolescent-filled
., rollercade, but it-
self produces like
actions on the part
of viewers. In an
attempt to avoid
blocking the paths
of light emitted
from the projectors,
and while trying toAnn Wood
Sour Grapes and Tease, 1999
Mixed media
Installation view
Photo: Courtesy of the Artistavoid each other in the darkened space,
viewers duck and shuffle, mimicking the
movements of the skaters, who likewise sway
to miss each other. Caillouet's installation thus
acknowledges the phenomenological circum-
stances of social interaction, as played out
both in the gallery space, and in a sport that is
as much mating ritual as it is a fun kinesthetic
experience.
But transcending the purely topical,
Caillouet's installation is also about the indi-
vidual's burgeoning awareness of "oneself" in
relation to the existence of "others." The dual
video images suggest a critique of the singular,
hegemonic point-of-view associated with the
Cartesian model of the self. Critics such as
Amelia Jones have noticed in the work of
similar video artists this attempt to dispel the
myth of the presumably masculine "magiste-
rial gaze." Caillouet's installation highlights
the multiplicity of perspectives in any given
situation, and by incorporating the viewer's
kinesthetic awareness of herself/himself, seems
to be directly questioning the way we recon-
cile ourselves as both subjects of
seeing/desiring, and as objects of someone
else's seeing/desiring. More specifically, she
seems to be noting the role of sexual desire
(represented by the adolescent "crushes"
discovered and enacted in roller rinks) in the
way we construct our understandings of
"Self."
Ultimately, Caillouet's project can be
read as feminist, for her installation rethinks
the politics of social space and architecture
through the phenomenology of desire. Her
installation infuses this phenomenological
critique with subject matter-adolescent
"love"-that challenges the traditionally
"cold," "unbiased," and "emotionless"
methods of Western philosophy. Together,
both Wood's and Caillouet's works offer
complex and rewarding investigations of
desire in general, and of feminine
imagery/critique specifically. OARTLIES SUMMER 1999 59
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Lightman, Victoria H. Art Lies, Volume 23, Summer 1999, periodical, 1999; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228053/m1/61/?q=%22Bryant%2C+John%22: accessed May 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .