Westender
June 15 – 21, 2006

By Mary Frances Hill

There’s a phase in childhood when a young girl is at her most beautiful. At just under 10 years of age, she’s a sponge for knowledge, supremely confident in her own skin, with few limits to her imagination.

A few years later, that once-boisterous energy takes a detour. With new curves in her body, her flesh is almost a roadblock, stalling that once-bursting confidence. She’s aware of her new vulnerability; suddenly, she’s being looked at, and misunderstood – perceived as less innocent than she is.

That’s the life stage in which Angela Grossmann has captured this prototypical girl for Paper Dolls, at the Diane Farris Gallery (1590 W. 7th Ave.) to June 24. In Paper Dolls, the girls’ faces are ghostly and delicate, influenced by photographs of the sullen faces of girls circa the 1920s. But if the faces are defined, her subjects’ blurred, sketchily-drawn bodies are reminders that suddenly they’re seen as consumable, subject to the male gaze.

“One of the points I’m making is that girls haven’t really changed,” Grossmann says, calling from her Gastown studio. “They’re still vulnerable and innocent and young, but now we have different expectations of them”

Where do we get these expectations? From the pop-culture icons the young girls mimic – the Britneys, Lindsays and Parises – who, in turn, entertain their pubescent audiences with sexually-charged personas.

“Perhaps because of a lapse in the women’s movement, there is nobody protecting that territory. It’s as if it’s open season. When you say “This isn’t right,’ you’re seen as a prude.”

Grossmann assembled in the Paper Dolls series in a collage of dozens of photographic fragments, and enhanced them with paint. Some she presents on canvas, others on huge pieces of sheet music originating from the 1950s – the era when the term “teenager” was first coined.

Paper Dolls is a sort of expansion of Grossmann’s ongoing exploration of teen girlhood. In 2002, she mounted Thirteen, and , in 2004, Alpha Girls, a series of paintings about the premature sexualization and social pecking order among girls as they come of age. In Paper Dolls, she includes a painting she calls "La Senza Girl", referring to the lingerie company’s venture into the pre-teen market.

In the vein, it’s no coincidence that Cosmopolitan magazine publishes Cosmo Girl for teen readers. In personal blogs, music videos and gossip rags, “the message is, it’s all about your body,” she says.

Grossmann’s solo ventures are a big departure from her efforts as part of the well-known group Futura Bold. With fellow group members and Emily Carr grads Attila Richard Lukacs, Derek Root, Doug Coupland and Graham Gillmore – inarguably, the superstars of Vancouver’s art scene – she created Vancouver School, creating Paper Dolls sparked some recollections of Grossmann’s own pubescent awareness – a comparatively benign era.

“We weren’t scrutinized in the same way, or measured for our physical attributes.”