Natural Crossdressing, Uninvited Collaborations, and One Small Act of Endurance
January 16th through February 22nd, 2003
Opening reception: Saturday, January 18th, 6 to 8 p.m.
Debs & Co is pleased to present Natural Crossdressing, Uninvited Collaborations, and One Small Act of Endurance, an exhibition of new work by Nina Katchadourian. The exhibition will be Katchadourian's third solo show with the gallery.
In Natural Crossdressing... Katchadourian furthers her exploration of "the
natural" that began with her Mended Spiderweb series, first exhibited at
Debs and Co. in 1999. Katchadourian returns to the sensationally unexotic
Finnish island of Pörtö and its cosey flora and fauna as starting point for
her Swiftian excursion into misapprehension and discommunication. In the
photograph titled Natural Crossdressing, the artist conscripts two hairy caterpillars to serve as a mustache, transforming her own face into a heroic male visage reminiscent of portraits of politicial leaders or
revolutionaries (the iconic image of Che Guevara cannot help but come to
mind). A larger group of caterpillars appear in QUIT USING US, a large
photograph the size and shape of a political banner, where the caterpillars
function as letterforms to spell out that phrase. The question remains: who
is "us"?
Katchadourian continues her voyage, literally and figuratively, in her Animal Crossdressing project. Begun in the tropical climes of Trinidad's Emperor Valley Zoo, the work depicts the process and the results of "crossdressing" a snake and rat in outfits that turn one into the other. Using the abundant textiles available in Trinidad for Carnival costumes (and less "exotic clothing"), Katchadourian fashions charming outfits for a pet rat named Rascal and a pet snake named Carla. Photographs of the crossdressed animals, and a video showing the not-so-straightforward task of dressing them up, accompany display cases holding the actual outfits worn by the animals. In her ridiculous study of the clothes making the rat, Katchadourian inquires whether a snake is a snake is a snake.
Endurance finds the artist in Antarctica, or rather, finds Antarctica in the artist's mouth. This video features archival footage from Ernest Shackleton's famous journey to the South Pole, and the demise of the expedition party's ship, also called the Endurance. An edited version of the historic film appears as a tiny projection on one of Katchadourian's front teeth. Beginning with an optimistic smile, Endurance soon degrades into a painful grimace as the artist salivates uncontrollably and the ship is crushed by pack ice. Endurance underlines the vanity of heroics and the hysterical puniness of human enterprise when the human and the natural are differentiated. In addition, it highlights our compulsion to watch these kinds of endurance tests, if and when we can experience them from a comfortable distance.
In 2002, Katchadourian was a grant recipient of the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and in 2001 she was awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award. She has had recent solo exhibitions at ArtPace, Catharine Clark Gallery, and ACC Galerie, Weimar (Germany). Her project Natural Car Alarms with the Sculpture Center was on view throughout 2002 in New York City. She has recently exhibited at the New Langton Center for the Arts, the Arcadia Art Gallery, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Arnolfini (UK), the Akron Art Museum, Sara Meltzer Gallery, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, the Susquehanna Art Museum, the Tang Museum, and the Serpentine Gallery (UK).
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Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Second Floor, New York, NY 10001. 212.643.2070.
Debs & Co. 525 West 26th Street, Second Floor, New York, NY 10001. 212.643.2070.