Homo domesticus
From Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Artist: Melissa Stang
August 3 – September 23, 2001
Minnesota Artists Gallery
Over the past decade, Chris Larson has created giant wood machines that, though immobile in real time and space, function in the mind of the viewer. Located at the transference point between the physical and spiritual (or between art and nonart), his contraptions also set the stage for out contemplation of the sacred and the profane.
In Larson's second film project, American Gothic (Saturday Night/Sunday Morning), he worked with director Jason Spafford and sound engineer Alex Oana, using his sculpture as a theatrical set. As creative director, actor, set and prop designer, and builder, Larson used the poetic themes of Americana and vaudeville to extend his inquiry into metamorphosis and the phenomenon country music calls “Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.” Larson played three different mythic characters. The actions of the first two-a magician and a farmhand-resulted in the birth of the third, a fancy-suited country-and-western guy with legs so long that he can't stand. It's a fancy but dark affair.
In Homo domesticus, Melissa Stang presented two new works. The first, From the Real Life Drawing Co-op: Still Life with Domestic Disarray, was a monumental, irregularly shaped and assembled painting that sought to reconcile the often-unattainable cultural expectations she has experienced as a woman artist. The painting sported cartoon-style images from her life, complete with a cubist sense of space that not only tipped tables up, but gave a fresh look under her kitchen sink and inside a closet heaped with shoes and dirty laundry.
The second part of Stang's exhibit was titled Period Room for a Moist Temperate Environment (or, A Natural History Guide for Interior Decorators). Here she depicted a domestic interior of a female herpetologist, filled with furniture from yesteryear and assorted feminine domestic crafts bedecked with lizards and amphibians. Through this work Stang challenged museums' presentation and ideas of “high” and “low” art.
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Related Works of Art
 Melissa Stang, Homo domesticus, 2001 |
 Melissa Stang, Homo domesticus, detail, 2001 |
 Melissa Stang, Homo domesticus, detail, 2001 |
Related Materials
Related Events
- Opening Reception and film screening: Thursday, August 2 – September 23, 2001 in the Minnesota Artists Gallery.
- Artist-talk with Melissa Stang: Sunday, August 19, 2001 at 3:00 p.m. in the Minnesota Artists Gallery.
- Artist-talk and film screening with Chris Larson: Thursday, August 23, 2001 at 7:00 p.m. in the Minnesota Artists Gallery and Pillsbury Auditorium.
