From an enormous accumulation of discovered and readymade client merchandise, Portia Munson has created elaborate sculptures and installations for greater than three a long time that discover the thinly veiled messages and codes embedded in mass-produced objects.
Based mostly in Catskill, New York, the artist first started working with discovered client gadgets like plastic figures and kitsch in 1989 when she offered an early model of a brilliant pink assemblage titled “Pink Project: Table” for her MFA thesis exhibition at Rutgers College.
Munson had been accumulating pink plastic objects to make use of as references for work, however over time, they started to overhaul her studio. “I realized it was a piece unto itself,” she says. “If you have an idea and something you want to express, then you find the medium that’s best going to express those ideas.”
Pink emerged as a central curiosity for Munson as she started to interrogate why the colour is related to ladies, particularly infants and younger ladies. For years, she collected something that was pink, plastic, and manufactured on a mass scale, typically rummaging by knick-knacks at storage gross sales, thrift shops, and flea markets.
Over time, Munson’s items expanded to incorporate immersive environments constructed totally from a single shade, such because the fabric-draped inside of “Garden” or the Pink Undertaking collection that continues by works like “Pink Project: Bedroom.”
Tables and serving trays present platforms for Munson’s seemingly jumbled compositions, bundling quite a few collectible figurines along with string and cord, like in her Serving Tray collection or the large-scale “Bound Angel.”
“Serving Tray #6,” for instance, presents a mixture of ceramic and glass representations of ladies, tethered with string and perched on a silver platter. Munson describes the group of blindfolded, fettered figures as “sacrificial martyrs, inviting the contemplation of what we are being fed as a culture and who ultimately pays for it.”
Displayed throughout the whole thing of a cloth-covered oval eating desk, “Bound Angel” brings collectively dozens of discovered white statuettes and lamps, a lot of which depict angels. Munson has wrapped rope and string round their our bodies and faces, emphasizing the constraints society locations on ladies, illuminating struggles which may be hidden in plain sight.
“This piece is one in a series of works that explore how femininity and the female body are portrayed in our culture,” Munson says in a press release. She provides:
“Bound Angel” reviles the insatiable, consumerist, sexist, and repressive worth methods which degrade society. By bringing these objects collectively, this piece harnesses their collective energy, remodeling their unique perform to pacify, sexualize, and infantilize ladies into one in all retaliation, confrontation, and energy.
“Bound Angel” can be on view at Artwork Basel Miami Seashore within the Meridians space, a sector of the honest devoted to large-scale installations, sculptures, and performances. The present runs from December 6 to eight, the place Munson’s work can be offered by P·P·O·W. Discover extra on the artist’s web site.
