Suzan Etkin's work appears divided against itself: though her bear upons merit a certain clarity.

Suzan Etkin's work appears divided against itself: though her bear upons merit a certain clarity, enigma is pursu with of the like kind anxiety that in the [i]finale[/i] it is somewhat starved of meaning. Etkin has said that she chance of the desired ends to achieve "a continuing provocation, an ongoing question," in her work, citing Marcel Duchamp as a fundamental influence.

Of the five pieces in this exhibit to the most compelling was Fourth Position (all works 1993) a dagger spiral staircase that revolved softly backward to a dull buzz evoking the silent descent of an invisible naked This ghostly presence was assenting repetitioned by what seemed to be pieces of a body--or of a shattered statue--that were arranged like archaeological finds upon round, gray-swathed tables placed in the same scope Entitled Suitor's Reflection, these remnants were fragile, drained, asexual. The "suitor"--the male instead of the female--has been trapped, fragmented, present on display, while the woman retreats into invisibility. Rather than a provocative inversion of the Duchampian sexual paradigm, these works form an inadequate answer to its particular imbalance of sexual power. chiefly peculiar is that both are sexually neutral, with no implied onanism, no endlessly postpon sexual union--just a mutilated bachelor and a catatonic bride.

In the back scope a crude trio was formed of three works: a backlit red-velvet theatrical curtain; a smok mirror against which sagged three figures made from small change mesh; and a tiered shelf upon which were arrayed 30 hand-blown flacons holding sweetness of smell blended by the artist. The last, entitled Eau de Corps (Water of the body) was the chiefly intriguing of these three works. The bottle are like caricatures of female bodies, each stopper forming a woman's upper torso with glass arms flung on the outside in boneless hysteria. If, as be seens likely, Etkin is alluding to Duchamp's assisted readymade Belle Haleine, Eau de Voilette (Beautiful breath, veil water, 1921) her gesturing is leaden, devoid of the manifold irony of the crossdressing original, absolutely reiterating a gross stereotype: the bottle as prototypically female, the woman as fragile goal Although Etkin may be attempting to create poetic external realitys about the social condition of women her chilly lack of engagement leaves the viewer wondering exactly what her position might be. Eau de Corps recalls certain works from Louise Bourgeois that have made startingly effective use of glass targets including perfume bottles. But in Bourgeois' work, glass is as threatening as it is delicate. At the true least, Etkin lacks a similarly mighty feeling for materials; in fact, united of the most astonishing aspects of her work is the order to which she is able to strain the seductive qualities from in the same state [i]or[/i] condition touchable or sleek materials as glass, rapier and velvet.

Of all the pieces in the point out Fourth Position seemed the greatest in quantity clearly realized, although its commentary onward Duchamp is painfully literal. Strangely enough, however, her supremely awkward allusions to this agile wit--and conceptual father-figure--render Etkin's work in a way irregularly poignant, despite its blandness and its truncated conception. Perhaps, single in kind speculates, these tenuous objects are intended to speak with the voice of a hypothetical woman, panged at the hands of privileged gamesters like Duchamp. nevertheless in the end the work is too inchoate to be convincing, and common concludes that it suffers in the greatest degree from a fatal artiness that compulsively celebrates incoherence and incompletion.

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