A Basement of Dolls - Resistance Gallery
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
PRESENTED by Strychnin Gallery London and Resistance Gallery, A Basement of Dolls – New Works in Oil by Suzzan B opens at the Resistance Gallery at 7pm on February 13, 2009, when it features a live performance by The McCarricks.
Interested in psychology, physiognomy and body language, works by British painter Suzzan Blac are not for the faint of heart. Negative feelings, pain, anger and frustration are the motives behind them, often making them uncomfortable to look at through their intense, direct expression of strong emotions.
Blac is interested in the darker aspects of human feeling: her latest series of paintings, to be seen at Strychnin Gallery’s new London collaboration partner Resistance Gallery, is about the sexual and social conditioning and exploitation of females.
Blac loves the colour, translucence and mobile quality achieved by painting in oils. Using only her imagination, she starts all her work with a blank canvas and a subconscious doodle, creating intense images by channeling her own emotions and by reflecting the viewer’s mind into her work: laughter, repulsion or amazement, sometimes all combined into one.
She considers herself a surrealist through whose art we can observe the innermost thoughts of another human being without feeling intrusive, and thus have the capacity to connect, identify and react to the universal insights that can be found in her paintings.
Her latest series of works deals with the pressure exerted upon women by the media to conform to outside standards of beauty and physical perfection, as well as social conditioning to become beautiful ornaments and sexual objects, all of which can result in detrimental effects such as eating disorders, dangerous plastic surgery, and lack of self-worth brought on by feelings of inadequacy, especially in young girls and teenagers.
Focusing on the realm of pornography with Playboy merchandise aimed at girls as young as eight, Blac questions the effect the industry may have on the personal development of these young minds, and consequently on their adult personalities.
A Basement of Dolls depicts women with mutilated bodies adorned with lingerie and other stereotypical visuals of a sexualized point of view, such as exaggerated lips, doll’s bodies or stylized reproductive organs, vividly coloured hair and overdone make-up. They call attention to our concepts of beauty and also of intimacy, causing us to question our own ideals regarding beauty and gender, and those imposed upon us by the media and society.
The exhibition runs until March 6, 2009.
Times: Thursday to Sunday from 1pm until 7pm.
Resistance Gallery, 265 Poyser Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9RF
Tel: 772 350 5641