Marian Glebes: No Ball Playing: Objects Of Rebellion And Control
@ Mess Hall
6932 N Glenwood Ave, Chicago, IL 60626
Opening Saturday, May 28th, from 5PM - 8PM
On view through Sunday, May 29th
In No Ball Playing: Objects Of Rebellion And Control, the dandelion, the paper airplane, the water filter, the insect, are objects that are at once subversive, but contain potential proactivity, they are humble and monumentalized, playful and precious. Using labour-intensive yet whimsical gestures infused with childlike wonder or scientific inquisition, Marian April Glebes attempts to control the uncontrollable.
The insect repairs from the series Misplaced Altruism/Vanities of Aid are grotesque mortuarial attempts to preserve or mend, meticulous gestures executed on found carcasses, symbolic of an impulse to restore order in a fragile environment and to fill a void created by patheticness in form. This adornment or patching of battered insect bodies is misplaced altruism, which quells the vanities in aid or pity by indulging the most absurd and effete of generosities: squandered restoration and functionless beauty. The youthful naivete of bottling butterflies or lightening bugs for collection is replicated in Glebes’ process here as fruitless containment and embellishment.
The seemingly benign dandelion is similarly sterilized and preserved via misplaced altruistic protective gestures that either attempt to permanatize ephemeral moments or protect from perceived and circumscribed threats. Simultaneously terrorist of the front lawn and childhood plaything, the dandelion is used here to symbolically dissect the fragility and absurdity of our received suburban values.
Like the insect and the dandelion, the paper airplane is object of both rebellion and control. It is a classroom revolt, is exactitude and precision. The paper airplane’s inherent dichotomies again erupt as toy becomes precious object, and failures of construction erode sculpture into plaything. Through the dandelion, the paper airplane, and the other objects, No Ball Playing: Objects of Rebellion and Control flirts with obsessive structure to address issues of the urban and suburban environment, the character and power of the artist, and the potential agency of the art object as a tool for social change.
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