Janine Antoni

 
2011 Guggenheim Fellow - Fine Art

After the fall: An installation view of Janine Antoni's To Draw a Line 2003

I'm not a member of the sizable Janine Antoni cult, one of those who view this MacArthur-winning artist as a kind of aesthetic archangel. I am a fan, however, even if I know her work can be unvisual and overly cerebral. Still, I love Mom and Dad, her gender-bending photographic transformation of her parents; Mortar and Pestle, her terrifying photo of a type of kiss I never imagined (Antoni's eye being licked full-on by a man's tongue); Loving Care, in which she dipped her hair into dye, then mopped a gallery floor with it; and of course Gnaw, her chocolate and lard sculptures. When Antoni's on, she laces material with a primitive mix of desire, pensiveness, petulance, and grit. When she's off, there's more to think about in her work than look at. Usually, when this happens with an artist, it means that the ideas exist outside the object. This troubling tick surfaced in Antoni's celebrated 1993 performance/sculpture, Slumber, for which she slept in the gallery, recorded her rapid eye movements, and, on waking, wove strips of her nightgown into a blanket patterned on her dreams. When she was in the space, you could experience her shrewd circular logic, and the piece was magical. On it's own, Slumber was a snooze. To Draw a Line, the huge sculptural centerpiece of her current show, has this problem, yet it also gives you so much to think about that it almost overcomes its dullness.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2003-09-30/art/the-artist-who-fell-to-earth/