<3 <3 <3 My Funny Valentine <3 <3 <3

 

 

Curated by Nora Slade

 

​

Aura Rosenberg

Maria Pithara

Cindy Hinant

Nora Slade

 

February 14th - March 17th, 2013

Opening: Thursday, February 14th 6:00 - 9:00

​

​

​

​

<3 <3 <3 My Funny Valentine <3 <3 <3 is an exhibition of sculpture, drawing, video and photography by four artists whose work employs varying methods of making to articulate the struggle between the specificity of an individual’s innate desire and the ubiquity of the lens through which such symbols are perceived. The title of the show is taken from an essay by Helen Molesworth, published in Artforum, January 2010, that addresses the ways in which a work of art can be a “palimpsest of, and testament to” profound love with another person.

​

Seeking to address “the problem of desire’s specificity,” works by Cindy Hinant, Maria Pithara, Aura Rosenberg and Nora Slade playfully embrace clichés of romantic love while approaching, concentrically, the loss of control that is mysteriously at the center of desire for another person.

​

In Aura Rosenberg’s Untitled (Man with Palm Trees), 1989, from the series The Dialectical Porn Rock, pornography displayed on a rock oscillates between being an erotic object and a tableau of such, viewed voyeuristically by a lurking figure in the background. Cindy Hinant’s Untitled Heart Drawing, 2010, renders the unique intention behind each drawing of a heart and the word “FUCK” a failure of inadequate expression. The heart and “FUCK” approach specificity earnestly, but wind up in a circle of frustration, chasing the tail of meaning latent in popular representations of affection.

​

​

In Maria Pithara’s Milk Sorrow, 2010, a haptic recognition occurs between the video’s female subject and the scopophiliac, barking dog. Hinant’s Bed Grids, 2011, expose the relationship between the physical intimacy of a private space and an ordered art practice – splaying open the sexuality that is the genesis of her minimalist art works.

 

Nora Slade’s Twofold, 2012, embodies the “whodunnit” dilemma of not being able to own ones own desire.

​

​

​

​

Short Essay

​

​

Staleness:

Because I cannot see

Because I cannot know my desire

Because of burning and ashes

I am looking at my own death

Now in desperation I will help this one, that one

But there will be no help given

There will be hope and determination and no breathing

​

​

-Agnes Martin

​

​

​

​

Dirty Mirrors performance: