Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape

Francisca Valdivieso, She-Octopus, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London

Lustrous and smooth in porcelain, the bikini clad figure of a woman stands resplendent, her legs entangled with the multifarious arms of two octopi. On the opposite wall, the faces of 13 forgotten starlets from the silent movie era gaze at the viewer, their hopeful expressions executed in succinct and deft brush strokes. Nearby, a large C-print photograph of a woman in shades, grins knowingly at us, her eyes obscured by large, black shades. Blackbirds dot the pale blue sky of the landscape that frames her. Approaching the life-size photograph, it becomes apparent – startlingly so – that a thick layer of paint has been applied all over the subject: her skin has been daubed with a larger-than-life fleshy pink and her hair has painted a deep chestnut brown. Even her black sunglasses have not been spared.

These are works by three artists – Annie Kevans, Francisca Valdivieso and Boo Ritson – exhibiting at Cecilia Brunson Projects. The artworks, which vary from painting, photography and porcelain, unite to form a compendium of the wonderful and the fantastic, the uncanny and the dreamlike, and the beautiful and the poignant in this thoughtfully curated show. Also interesting is the manner in which each artist has concentrated on a specific media, making it uniquely their own.

Francisca Valdivieso’s sumptuous porcelain sculptures turns the material’s association with kitsch and genteel luxury on its head. She employs storytelling, fables, mythical figures and animals to explore the relationship between the adulthood and childhood; and on an extended metaphoric level, that of society and the individual. Innocence, vulnerability, manipulation and control are all themes which are cleverly juxtaposed in her work.

She-Octopus, for example, is a meditation on motherhood. The octopi’s many arms and large suckers both entangle and embrace the protagonist, who appears to be transfixed in a state between transcendence and physical ecstasy. The octopi is a metaphor for the all consuming, and at times, somewhat smothering nature of motherhood. Here, the balance of power appears to favour the octopi (or is the protagonist’s children?); the mother’s expression might signify a surrender to those that bind her. But, considering her voluptuous and earthy physique, there is also a reference to another kind of deliverance: female sexuality. These contradictory aspects of sexuality and subjugation is compounded by the large suckers of the octopus, which act both as a metaphor for clinginess, and a symbol of female sexuality in Japanese culture.

Valdivieso mines her own childhood for her work; influences originate from European fairy tales archetypes, as well as more recent consumer culture such as Japanese and American animation. Her work has a narrative thread, although it is open ended; broken phrases, figments of stories – ultimately, it is more an evocation of a mood, and there is a tense, charged atmosphere to her delicate sculptures.

Exhibition View, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London

Exhibition View, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London

WAMPAS Baby Stars, Annie Kevans, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape, Cecilia Brunson Projects, London

WAMPAS Baby Stars, Annie Kevans, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape, Cecilia Brunson Projects, LondonAnnie Kevans, the second exhibiting artist, has devoted her practice to portraiture. Her sparse, ethereal portraits succinctly apprehend the essence of her sitters, although she is less interested in capturing their likeness, than in communicating the wider concept of her investigations.

The WAMPAS Baby Stars is a series of 13 portraits of young hopefuls apparently destined to be the next big thing. Devised in the 1920s as a promotional tool by the West Coast movie industry, the WAMPAS aimed also to define and propagate what was felt to be the American beauty – white, protestant girls, that for the most part were the fancy of the directors. Most of the Baby Stars were young, with little or no experience in film, and with the exception of Ginger Rodgers and Joan Crawford, the majority faded into obscurity. Exploited by the directors, and eventually cast aside, many suffered tragic ends. Reflected in these portraits of the Baby Stars, one sees the double-edge sword of the fantasy of wannabe stardom: anticipation, desire, and ultimately resignation.

Ideas around exploitation, and the role of the individual in inherited belief systems and accepted power structures are major themes in Kevans’ work. Her use of portraiture, a well-worn medium which is associated – unconsciously or otherwise – with truth and fact, makes the ‘accepted’ reality which she is contesting even more tenuous.

In contrast with Kevan’s demure beauties, Boo Ritson’s works of painted people and food are large, brazen, hyper-real photographs. Her work combines sculpture, painting, performance art, and photography. Thick, viscous applications of brightly coloured paint on bodies, which have been used as a canvas, evoke images of Americana: the hamburger, the mysterious female, an eerie Hitchcock film. The layer of paint, however, acts as a mask, removing the interiority or identity of her sitters, and, in the case of the hamburger, removing the basic nourishing function of food. Aspects of truth and reality are removed – there is only the bright candy coloured surface – which has the effect of pushing her subjects into the realm of fantasy and hyper-reality. The viewer is forced the viewer to consider the nature of fantasy, and by contrast, reality, and our superficial definition. Fantasy is indeed escapism.

Annie Kevans, Francisca Valdivieso, Boo Ritson, Curiouser and Curiouser: Fantasies as Escape at Cecilia Brunson Projects, London through March 8, 2014.