Vancouver
Sun
Monday, October 18, 2004
The lean, mean world of girls sheds light on our times:
Artist's work examines the effects of mass marketing and premature
sexualization
By Yvonne Zacharias ALPHA GIRLS
New work by Angela Grossmann, Diane Farris Gallery, 1590 West
Seventh, to Oct. 23
In some images, the girls huddle together, the more fawning
ones surrounding their alpha superiors. In others, they appear
as solitary figures trapped like diaphanous butterflies in their
own thoughts.
Welcome to the strange world of the adolescent girl.What is
it about these seemingly benign creatures that makes them so
mean to each other? What makes them form exclusionary cliques,
each with its own internal pecking order? Why have we allowed
advertising and the Internet to sexualize girls prematurely?
Vancouver artist Angela Grossmann explores these questions in
an exhibition called Alpha Girls at the Diane Farris Gallery.
She doesn't know why girls will be girls, with their cryptic
codes. She just knows that is the way they are. So she has come
up with a series of 13 grainy images that make the girls look
innocent and knowing at the same time. Grossmann dresses the
budding young bodies in gossamer layers that hint at both sexuality
and mass marketing. She bathes them in muted colours interspersed
by bubble-gum pink and orange. At times, the girls come across
as being ethereal; at others, they have the worldly look of
fugitives.
The viewer often sees a child dressed in adult clothes. In this
way, Grossmann gets to the heart of her message: Girls are the
victims of a Sell, Sell, Sell mantra that has seen underwear
shops sprouting for girls as young as eight or nine and thong
panties for the near-baby set.
Anyone who suggests there is something amiss about this immediately
comes across as a prude. "Since the feminist movement died
out, no one is capable of speaking out about this," Grossmann
said in the middle of the gallery, the faces of her young subjects
shining down all around her. "If we don't keep that neighbourhood
watch happening, we are dropping respect for the next generation.
"The artist is clear about one thing -- she is not a proselytizer
or a politician. She just thinks it helps to recognize what
has happened --to develop a language around the subject and
to talk about it.
The brave new commercial world has put a twist on a truism regarding
adolescent girls. They have their own hidden, almost indecipherable
codes that cause them to clump together in cliques. It's no
fun being on the outside. |
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