Bambi
dal 19/11/2004 al 19/12/2004
Segnalato da
19/11/2004
Bambi
The Dollhaus Art Gallery, New York
Freakshow Pin Ups. Visual artist and performer Bambi the Mermaid has created a collection of images portraying fantastical creatures, grotesque characters, auto-biographical scenes and fetish dreams in her body of work.
Freakshow Pin Ups
Visual artist and performer Bambi the Mermaid has created a collection
of images portraying fantastical creatures, grotesque characters,
auto-biographical scenes and fetish dreams in her body of work called
Freak Pin-Ups. Bambi's goal in this work is to explore extreme
elements of attraction and repulsion that manifest themselves in both
everyday life and dramatic presentations. She places both her
self-image and her actual self on the line for these images by
appearing in each Pin-Up without modesty or vanity and in many cases
highlighting perceived flaws and grotesque deformities.
Drawing upon the backdrops of Coney Island, Las Vegas, carny culture
and down-trodden America, she has created an almost-Technicolor
tableaux of photographic images in which she both stars and directs the
process with the assistance of a sympathetic photographer who has
documented all of the characters. Her challenge to traditional notions
of what elements create attraction, beauty, sexuality, and dominance is
played out in the images and characters as they interact with other
models or their surroundings. Frequently using masks and animalistic
elements to abstract the characters from her real-life comely blonde
figure. Recurring themes in her imagery are freak shows, carnival
life, lunacy, obsession, fetish, pornography, sex work, and a lot of
birds.
Bambi draws upon her years of real-life research in the roles of a
stripper, dominatrix, burlesque performer, fetish model, and freak show
act. Her concepts evolve from an emotional connection with a character
like the girl with lobster hands, a chicken-headed stripper, or a
make-up obsessed woman. She presents the characters with both empathy
and an unflinching eye to what most people would consider flaws or
outright mutations. She celebrates all from freaks of nature to freaks
of imagination and the fetishes that spring from internal desires for
extreme and unique beauty.
The presentation of the shocking characters in a matter-of-fact point
of view adds authenticity to scenes like a dog-headed prostitute
waiting at the window for her next trick or a real-life beauty posing
on the beach with her pornographic blow-up doll twin. Bambi treats
these characters with a novelty no greater than a siliconed stripper or
a trussed dominatrix that have become so familiar in popular culture
that they are virtually the norm rather than the fetish. Her fetish
icons generate both lust and discomfort.
Bambi's images have been seen in solo and group showing in New York
City art galleries and a book containing more than fifty different
freak pin-ups is planned.
Opening Reception
Saturday November 20th
8pm-Midnight
The Dollhaus Art Gallery
37 Broadway
Williamsburg
New York City