Alice Channer
Body Fluids, 2012
Digital print on heavy crepe de chine, cast aluminum, chrome bar 
114 1/8 x 54 3/4 x 1 1/8 in. (290 x 139 x 3 cm) Courtesy of the gallery

Alice Channer, 
Body Fluids, 2012
Digital print on heavy crepe de chine, cast aluminum, chrome bar.
114 1/8 x 54 3/4 x 1 1/8 in. (290 x 139 x 3 cm)
Courtesy of the gallery

Anicka Yi, Prada String Quartet No. 15 3/4 in A Minor, First Movement, 2013
Glycerin soap, sodium silicate, desiccant bead, acrylic paint, acetate, plastic petri dish, Prada moisturizer package, teeth whitener, gum eraser, fish oil capsule, silicone insole, wax, clay, spray paint, aluminum frame.
48 x 34 x 1 in. (121.92 x 86.36 x 2.54 cm) Courtesy of the gallery

Anicka Yi, Prada String Quartet No. 15 3/4 in A Minor, First Movement, 2013.
Glycerin soap, sodium silicate, desiccant bead, acrylic paint, acetate, plastic petri dish, Prada moisturizer package, teeth whitener, gum eraser, fish oil capsule, silicone insole, wax, clay, spray paint, aluminum frame.
48 x 34 x 1 in. (121.92 x 86.36 x 2.54 cm)
Courtesy of the gallery

 

“Everything Must Go”

 

Today’s class 3-Deifying;

Godgrass, godtrees, godroad.

 

A sheet of geese bisects the rainstorm.

The water tower is ten storms full.

 

We practice drawing cubes –

That’s the house squared away

 

& the incubator with Baby.

The dead are in their grid.

 

O the sleeping bag contains

the body but not the dreaming head.

 

-Matthea Harvey

 

 

This poem is the given context for a new show curated by McIntyre Parker at Altman Siegel gallery with work by Alice Channer, Aaron Flint Jamison, and Anicka Yi. The title “O the sleeping bag contains the body but not the dreaming head” pulled from the final verse hints at a unifying thread for the show in the word contains. Containment, compartmentalization, even containers, abound in the sparse show of just four works. From Alice Channer’s hanging print of hair impressed with two Panteen bottles and the shared preoccupation with packaging and grooming in Anicka Yi’s solidified glycerin soap canvas of suspended beauty product packaging, to the severed cast aluminum finger also by Channer and Aaron Flint Jamison’s letterpress books securely stored in a padded case.

 

 

Alice Channer, Very Dry Skin, 2013.
Cast alumnium, nail polish, wall fixings.
4 1/2 x 5/8 x 5/8 in. (11.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 cm) Courtesy of the gallery.

Alice Channer, Very Dry Skin, 2013.
Cast alumnium, nail polish, wall fixings.
4 1/2 x 5/8 x 5/8 in. (11.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 cm)
Courtesy of the gallery.

 

A consumer striving for beauty and physical betterment is neatly addressed not only by the referencing to beauty products and rituals, but in the overall approach to the body (in particular, the female body, as interpreted by the very long hair in Channer’s print and the nail polish worn on her finger) as disparate and separate from the person which embodies those parts. This otherness of the body from the mind seems reinforced by Jamison’s case; a package of tools and thoughts securely guarded and kept at a distance from the other more visceral works–as good a metaphor as any for the mind and it’s smallness and supremacy in relation to the rest of body.

 

For more information visit here.

 

-Contributed by Kathryn McKinney