Declasser, 2015
28 March – 16 April 2015
Unit 9 Gallery
Exposing the naked female form challenges the preconceptions that are carried forward when the body becomes a Part-Object. Forcing the portion to be seen outside its familiar context, no longer a part of the whole; it is declassified and debased to an altered function.
The female form is condensed from a whole body to the simplicity of a single element. It becomes “about the purification and reduction of forms,” Rosalind Krauss. The reduction is a means to question the values that are associated with the form. Does femininity, sexuality or maternal nature carry forward with the object or is it debased to an inanimate object? The viewer is led to question whether the object is the complete sculpture and “to concentrate the procedure by which bodily fragment comes to stand for the body as a whole,” Mignon Nixon.Choosing not to show signs of the extraction from the body reinforces that the work is a complete piece and they can interpret independently.
The sculpturally explicit female body parts are used repetitively to further challenge viewers and allow exploration of the use of different materials. Each material should evoke an altered response to the form; both sculptor and viewer are on a journey of exploration as to whether hard materials alter a preconception of female softness.
WILLOW STACEY 