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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Your Heart is No Match for My Love
Wednesday 26 May @ 15:42:22 |
 @ No Name Exhibitions at The Soap Factory
by Valerie Valentine
Everyone’s fallen in love at some point (I hope!). The curators and artists of Your Heart is No Match for My Love set out to refine love’s theme visually. In this attempt, the art goes beyond Cupid’s arrows and curvy Aphrodites, managing to transcend the myriad clichés we have about love.
 Conceptual art easily lends itself to new interpretations of romance. Going way beyond representational love icons, these artists translate the ache of infatuation. The joy of these pieces is the reprocessed meaning of everyday objects. Selena Kimball’s “Store in a Cool Dry Place” is a shriveled potato growing roots, naturally shaped in a heart. Its pitiful little self creates something like sympathy for a lonely root vegetable.
Kyungen Kim makes a simple statement with “Amost,” a red bungee cord stretched taut, but severed in the middle. It’s like a big “but not quite” modifier: everything looks great, except for this one tiny yet enormous flaw. In romantic context, it echoes realists’ complaints about lovers whose small quirks become huge pains after the initial attraction cools down.
The fallback on the “Loves me/Loves me Not” game that little girls play is sort of tired here, but for the twist that it’s a grown man crying and plucking daisy petals in Christopher Sollars’s video. Robert Beck frames two bullets with the same title, which is creepy and ominous: one for her, one for him? Much of the love expressed here seems doomed and obsessive.
Alexa Horochowski’s installation painting of a loving couple is in happy colors of pink and red; looking closer, there’s a dovelike bird linking chunks of their exposed brains. The peaceful demeanor of these vulnerable creatures also manages to convey the violence of love’s emotions, and even the mutilation (less physical, more mental) that is inherent in joining with another.
Perhaps the most charming inclusions of the show are Rama Hoffpauir’s “I’ll Find Things for You.” Dozens of jewelry lockets are strung together in subtle clumps around the gallery, inviting viewer participation in opening them. The delicious clink of the jewelry appeals with its tactility; the doodles inside are charming love notes and occasionally bawdy views of naked butts and couples tongue kissing. The jangly tokens of amor surprise and delight.
Also showing are some video installations, some graphic roadkill photos by Suzanne E. Szucs, and some plaster pajama bodies that depict the weighty burden of babies by Dave Beck. Free tattoos are also available—always a plus!
Your Heart is No Match for My Love runs through June 20. No Name Exhibitions @ The Soap Factory, 2nd St. between 5th & 6th Aves. SE, Mpls. 612-623-9176.
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