TARA GIANNINI: LITTLE VANITIES / February 24-April 16, 2006

 
“Little Vanities” by Tara Giannini presents a theatrical view of reality, combining found objects such as Baroque sculptural motifs, taxidermy animals, costume jewelry, fake flowers, ornately designed textiles, and colorful, deeply slathered paint. It is a dramatic seduction into a surrogate reality that Giannini captures. The idea of a visual theatrical curtain of framing device acts as a means to imply an artificial reality--an event taking place. She incorporates and formulates her worlds out of many different materials, resulting in a surplus of material splendor that ensnares the viewer with its unabashed lushness and opulence. The scenes which she creates allow us to peer into the dark corners of the romantic psyche, in which an overload of sensory detail leads us through a view of aesthetic perfection that resembles madness. As Andre Breton states in Nadja: “Beauty must be convulsive or not at all.”