ART CITIES:San Francisco-Janine Antoni
Janine Antoni at her solo exhibition “Turn” presents a new series of ceramic vessels alongside a new architectural installation of Crowned. As a sculptor, Antoni is fascinated by the negotiation between the mother’s and child’s bodies.
By DimitrisLempesis
Photo: Anthony Meier Fine Arts Archive
In “Crowned”, Antoni uses a pair of pelvic bones to frame the gallery in architectural molding. Placed at hip height, like traditional chair molding, Antoni’s version substitutes a classical profile for the profile of the hipbone’s inner edge. During its installation, Antoni let the splatters of plaster give way to gravity and spill off the pelvic bone as it is dragged along the plaster packed architecture. The installation stands in visceral contrast to the refined molding that defines the Gallery’s space. Antoni’s series of pit-fired ceramic vessels are inspired by the notion of crowning: the process during childbirth when the fetus is pushed past the threshold of the mother’s pelvic bones. The term comes from the idea that these bones are a momentary crown for the emerging fetus. Entitled “Rosa” and “Mary”, each vessel is formed by a mother’s childbearing pelvic bones, creating a portrait of her womb. In “Hearth”, three vessels animate the phases of change when the mother’s sacrum shifts back to allow the baby’s head to pass through. In these three vessels, she articulates this process showing how each body both yields and forms to the other. In some cultures, the woman’s two pelvic bones and the sacrum are imagined as metaphorical hearthstones surrounding the fire of the woman’s reproductive organs.In 1996 at the exhibition “Everything That’s Interesting Is New”, hosted at “The Factory”, the newly renovated exhibition space of the Athens School of Fine Arts, the exhibition showcased for the first time the entire Dakis Joannou Collection, Janie Anthony for a while asleep inside the exhibition space and wove her dreams of an electronic loom.
Info: Anthony Meier Fine Arts, 1969 California Str., San Francisco, Duration: 17/2-3/4/15, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri: 10:00-17:00, www.anthonymeierfinearts.com
