Lynda Benglis Opens at RISD Museum
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Her work, that is, in a remarkable retrospective of more than 50 pieces spanning 40 years. Opening this Friday, Lynda Benglis stops in Providence at one of only two North American venues (the other being the New Museum in New York City) as it has appeared in major international sites. It's a major coup, and a show that shouldn't be missed.
Finding the floor, the wall
Benglis is a questioner, and every piece of the show, from squat, sculptural forms of poured latex and polyurethane foam, to knotted wall pieces and metalized, pleated forms, to experimental videos and cast polyurethane towers, give outline and shape to her challenge of the prevailing aesthetics of each decade from the late 1960s through the 1990s.
Perhaps the exhibit's most dramatic piece, "Phantom," is an event in itself. In 1971, Benglis poured five cantilevered phosphorescent shapes, and their cascades are frozen in time and three dimensions. One of the five had been sold to a separate collector, and it is here at RISD that the five pieces reunite for the first time. The museum presents them in an alternately lit and darkened room, reminding of pressing glow-in-the-dark forms to lightbulbs, then racing to dark closets to see the tiny forms glow.
The artist as art
Benglis' early sensibility about not only her work as defiance, but her very self, gets attention in videos, magazines, and photographs Benglis created and modeled for. Lovers of Cyndi Sherman will nod at the clear lineage in the work. (And families should note that several of Benglis' photographic portraits contain potent sexual imagery.)
In the intelligent hands (not to mention heart and mind) of curator Judith Tannenbaum, Lynda Benglis is a show of international scope, right on South Main Street. Do not miss it.
Lynda Benglis opens Friday, October 1, and runs through Sunday January 9, 2011. The RISD Museum of Art, 224 Benefit St, Providence, 454-6500. For more information go to the RISD Museum Web site, here.
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