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Friend Zoned

JULY 15 – AUGUST 21, 2021

FRIEND ZONED

A group show of work by Gallery members and our friends, featuring The Dead Mask Project, an international collection of photographs curated by member X Bonnie Woods.

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 15, from 6-9 pm.

Closing Reception: Thursday, August 19, from 6-9 pm.

Gallery Hours: Fridays and Saturdays 2-6pm

For information or private appointment contact 857-302-8363 during gallery hours.

Samantha Marder in dressing room. BENT 2016

Samantha Marder in dressing room. BENT 2016

Meret Oppenheim is supposed to have described her famous Objet (Le Déjeuner en Fourrure-1936 ), the fur-covered cup, saucer and spoon, as “the image of femininity imprinted in the minds of men and projected on to women.”

Samantha Marder’s BENT  installation at  Boston’s Atlantic Works Gallery (December 3-30, 2016), begs similar questions as the cup: the social reality construct of femininity meets the reality of both being female, and/or dressing up like one. While the act itself–when we consider cross dressing to be an artistic act that makes its way to a gallery–questions who exactly is the man dressing up for? Perhaps the best answer is: himself, the person who in the moment is both male and female, the male projecting his dream on himself as a woman.

In turn, the witnessing of the documentation of man dressing up for himself and the accruements he uses to do it makes us, the viewer, a bit uncomfortable in the same way the idea of drinking tea from Oppenheim’s cup does. It’s a visceral “wait a minute!” reaction that is accompanied by a politically correct liberal voice that says, “It’s all right.”

But we all are programmed to react: real men don’t spend hours looking into mirrors; real women don’t really dress up like the man who is play acting a slut, a bride, a maid wearing crotchless underwear, or a mean horny nurse.

In our polarized culture, men are not to be treated as mere body, and women must consider themselves primarily body. The portrayed body becomes the feminized body, regardless of its sex.

Marder shows, in her installation, that femininity has image; masculinity has no image.

The two rooms in the gallery are set up like this:  One room is Reality. The second room is Dreamland.The middle divider is a dark curtain, like the subconscious, that the gallery goer and the cross dresser passes through when entering the rabbit hole.

Reality room. Samantha Marder Photos on wall. BENT, 2016.

Reality room.  BENT, 2016.

The reality room showcases a row of snapshots of men wearing wigs, women’s clothing and make-up.They look like they’re all having a blast: laughing, showing cleavage, revealing the thigh line of black stockings.

In the same room, on the opposite wall, is Marder’s journal, a sociological observation of

degrees of sexual, sexy and social behaviors; a list of the fantasies men prefer to act out after they’ve dressed up as women (job interviews, caught in the act of sexual betrayal, automat slut).

Once you pass through the black curtain, to the dreamland side of her installation, Marder shows you the nuts and bolts of the business of cross dressing all bathed in soft pink lights. There’s a lounge area to relax, listen to music, a basket of soft buttered buns. In one corner is a softly lighted bridal gown ( “Hindu men’s favorite fantasy,” she pointed out.)  In front of the leather sofa and  floor cushions is a glass topped coffee table filled with an assemblage of breast protheses.

To the far right in the dreamland area, is a small closet of a room lined floor-to ceiling with mirrors. It has a shag rug and a chandelier composed of pink fluffy petticoats.  In this room gallery goers can try on one of a handful of wigs and/or high heels, test dozens of tubes of lipstick, touch feathers. Girl heaven.

Samantha Marder in dreamland room with Bridal Gown. BENT, 2016

Samantha Marder  with Bridal Gown. BENT, 2016

Marder, who in addition to being an artist-exhibitor at Atlantic Works Gallery, has worked as a cross dresser facilitator for the past 20 years.  She has a degree in cultural anthropology and previously worked as a social worker.

Her show BENT is an intellectually eroticized exhibit that agrees reality is a construct; that plays with philosophical ideas about reality and gender; that acknowledges real men can’t dress up as women and hang out at their country club or attend their business’s board meetings.

“Usually men who want the experience of dressing up as a woman have to go to a dominatrix or prostitute. I am neither.”  She finds clients through ads in magazines, such as Boston Magazine.

Marder has a collection of over 200 miniskirts in her studio and perhaps twice as many panties. “Certain men reduce anxiety and stress by cross dressing, ” Marder said. “I am their fairy godmother, their facilitator, their guide.”

BENT is Marder’s second gender exploring installation at Atlantic Works Gallery.

BTW: in the 30s Meret Oppenheim sold her fur lined cup to the MoMA in New York for $50. Since this was the first work by a woman the museum acquired, Oppenheim is playfully called the First Lady of MoMA.

Object (or Luncheon in Fur), by Meret Oppenheim. In 1936, Oppenheim wrapped a teacup, saucer and spoon in fur. In the age of Freud, a gastro-sexual interpretation was inescapable. Even today, the work triggers intense reactions.

Object (or Luncheon in Fur), by Meret Oppenheim. In 1936, Oppenheim wrapped a teacup, saucer and spoon in fur. In the age of Freud, a gastro-sexual interpretation was inescapable. Even today, the work triggers intense reactions.

George Shaw

George Shaw

George Shaw’s paintings seduce the viewer with their color and secret. They are investigations of home and house, Shaw’s personal continent of experience. He studied painting at Massachusetts College of Art, graduating with honors, and works during the day as a master carpenter. Shaw also has a certificate in historic architectural  preservation. The paintings of a single house on an unnamed landscape provoke and free a sense of light, time and place and within those realms release a vulnerable precariousness. The seen feeling is a Hopper-esque isolation, a captured desire just out of grasp; a moment saturated with color and suggestion. The secret within the house is a light; life is happening.

Shaw said, however that his intention is not to be inside the house but to be approaching it.  “Life is an illusion,” he says, “we’re on a journey but we don’t know where. Meanwhile, we’re all looking for home.”  Home according to George, is a sense of place and security.

Shaw’s been producing paintings in his house series for two years.  His day job, finish carpenter, gives him the opportunity to be a voyeur in many people’s houses and family life.  He sees how people value their space and what they desire to have inside their house, how they create comfort and security and control the chaos and tentativness of life in their immediate surroundings.  “A lot of times it’s the idea they have of a house that people strive to attain.”

The paintings are very American in their idea of lone individualism, masculine in their frankness, saturated in color intelligence, and layered with spiritual meaning of potential ascension. Technically, Shaw’ paints on board using oil, powdered pigment, wax and glazes. He usually begins with the color in the sky and works his way down the board to the earth, knowing intuitively when the color needs to change. In many paintings a line of oil pastel defines the meeting line of heaven and earth, adding an intense seam of drama to that line where souls eventually ascend.

In the realm of the house, in search of the real resting place for family and soul, Shaw has positioned the viewer between the lure of the everlasting and the possibility of attaining that reality, sensation, idea, hope . A place we all hope to attain: home.sahw2

George Shaw is a member of Atlantic Works Gallery. An exhibit of his work “Home Again” is on exhibit at Galatea Fine Art in Boston, June 1-26, 2016. Upcoming shows at Atlantic Works, East Boston, and Colo Colo Gallery in New Bedford in the fall of 2016.

Website: http://www.georgeshawart.com

 

A few shots from the reception on March 20, 2014.

Josh and Bo play chess

Josh and Bo play a quickie chess game.

People, art

People, art

"Shattered," by Kristen Freitas

“Shattered,” by Kristen Freitas

Long view of gallery

Long view of gallery

piece by Rick Dorff

piece by Rick Dorff

Ian, Eric , Anna, Jack, ?

Hi Anna!

"Prayer Flags," by Lynn Hall

“Prayer Flags,” by Lynn Hall