Appetite for Destruction: Janine Antoni

margot.mifflin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:41:49 +0000

Ever since “Loving Care,” (1993) when she remixed Yves Klein (“Anthropometries of the Blue Period”) by using her hair, dipped in Clairol color, as a paintbrush, Janine Antoni has been worth following. Her gender bender continues in her current show, “Up Against,” at Luhring Augustine: in one photo, she’s literally strung up in her kid’s room, in bondage to domesticity; in another, she’s usurping male power by wearing a copper phallus that allows her to pee standing up (what next—pulling a Pollock in the de Menil fireplace?). Compelling as they are, these images have a whiff of Women’s Action Coalition era antics.
It turns out the most spellbinding piece in this show, “Tear,” isn’t about gender at all: it’s a giant eye (Antoni’s) projected floor to ceiling in a room crackling with ambient industrial sound. Every blink triggers a thunderous boom. The skittery, insect-like shifts of the pupil, even as the eye stares straight ahead, take on a freaky intensity the longer you look. The cornea pulsates like a prickly sea anemone. And a two-ton wrecking ball lying like a meteor in the center of the room punctuates the spectacle of the eyeball suspended in perpetual motion: That sound you hear is the wrecking ball on impact, recorded taking down a building in Pittsburgh. So each slow motion blink wipes clean the image—you—the eye consumes, over and over again. There’s nothing to do but submit to your own demolition. And it feels sublime–better than peeing standing up.

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Appetite for Destruction: Janine Antoni