Patty Carroll’s first solo exhibition at Gallery XII in Los Angeles. Bright colors and pastels of a modern soap opera – white, pink, orange, yellow – or black bodies of decomposed models, faces disappearing under accumulations of objects, flowers or good-natured decoration; the subjects of the photographs are presented in domestic environments that deny them any possibility of an identity of their own. In Patty Carroll’s work, each shot is an episode that can evoke the stagings of women photographers and artists of the last century. In the kitchen, the instruments remind us of Martha Rosler’s creations. The representations of a certain cinematic horror also evoke the work of Cindy Sherman. Composing with the domestic universe in a desire for humor and reappropriation, the photographer’s work also echoes the Womanhouse art project undertaken by Judy Chicago, which has become a cult. Finally, through the creation of paintings in which bodies and their environment merge, it is Carolee Schneemann’s Eye Body portraits that come to mind. Here, however, there are no portraits. In fact, the opposite is true; there is no way of discerning the identity of the protagonists, who disappear into their pervasive domesticity of social codification. A series with a fascinating universe…
« Anonymous Women » – Galerie XII Los Angeles
2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica (USA)
Until Wednesday 1 June 2022
Ana Bordenave