signs and symbols

What Lies Beneath at 89 Greene
Alex McQuilkin

May 4 - June 10, 2023

Opening Reception:
May 4, 2023
6:00-8:00pm

89 Greene at signs and symbols* is delighted to host Alex McQuilkin’s solo presentation, What Lies Beneath, curated by Kathy Battista for the gallery’s project space. Continuing a series of minimal, yet impactful shows, the presentation at 89 Greene consists of just three works hung on an artist-designed wallpaper, which is based on a painting by the artist, who has an abiding fascination with this element of interior design.

McQuilkin approaches her practice through the lens of performance and a relationship to labor that is deeply entwined with sublimated messages about gender. She combines psychoanalysis, maudlin sentimentality, dark humor and deep sincerity in her videos, paintings, objects and installations, through which she explores the construction of female identity in Western culture. Her work explores themes such as the role of cultural aesthetics in defining female identity and the power structures embedded within artifice.

Domestic aesthetics are given equal shrift to conceptual practice in McQuilkin’s work. Laura Ashley and Ralph Lauren wallpapers adorned the walls of many fashionable homes during the artist’s formative years. These “WASPy” brands were understood as class aspirational as they were marketed as elitist; only affordable to upper middle-class families, they gave the impression of an even higher status.

Thus, already in childhood, we are surrounded by a foundational layer that predicts how we understand class and prestige, as well as how we will interact with the world, receive information, and position ourselves. The wallpaper is a surreptitious element that conditions us to hierarchies of communication that we are primed to accept without question. In recent years she has become known for works that use vintage and contemporary wallpapers as source material, which are then translated into new palettes and scales. While she has made paintings about wallpaper, this is the first instance where the artist has produced a wall covering for an exhibition. The installation becomes a microcosm of a female identified domestic space, where gender dynamics are revealed in real time.

The three new pieces in the exhibition are part of a recent series, in which the artist hand embroiders statements from Sol Lewitt’s Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967) on hand dyed textiles. The soft pastel hues and birds eye fabric is typically known for its utilitarian purpose as cloth diapers. This process presents an aesthetic that unifies the experiences of artistic pursuits with motherhood, loss and intimacy. The embroidered works are framed in aluminum hoops that are industrially fabricated and painted to match the thread and textile. The resulting monochromes reference the heroic and gendered language of minimalism while simultaneously framing craft, labor and motherhood as the legitimate object of art.

The artist’s rebellious tactics recall the work of Mary Kelly, Louise Bourgeois and Senga Nengudi. By applying a rationalist, language-based approach to feminism and psychoanalysis, McQuilkin legitimizes a mother’s experiences as a topic for art. Having recently given birth to her second child, McQuilkin’s needlepoints co-opt both the aesthetics and materials of motherhood as well as Lewitt’s privileged guidelines for making conceptual art. Subverting the aesthetics of conceptual art and using Lewitt’s text as critique on societal mansplaining, McQuilkin compellingly complicates the dynamics of postpartum where intimacy and separation collide.

McQuilkin wrote of this series:

Sitting and nursing my daughter, I thought about Lewitt's sentences. I was trying to use this time productively, but my brain was foggy from hormones and sleep deprivation. Separating my creative productivity from the realities of life, I found myself in an unbearable separation of mind and body. I thought of Mierle Laderman Ukeles: "I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving etc. Also (up to now separately) I ‘do’ art." It was cathartic to combine this feminized labor with a logic that can only be approached in a privileged conceptual vacuum. On a theoretical level this work functions as a critique of authorship as well as feminized labor.

*Please note that all 89 Greene exhibitions are on view at the gallery’s location at 249 East Houston Street; the name of the project is only in reference to Jack Smith's historic address.

alex mcquilkin’s work has been exhibited internationally since 2000. She has had solo exhibitions at de boer, Los Angeles; Plymouth Rock, Zurich; Marvelli Gallery, New York; and Galerie Adler, Frankfurt. Group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York; KW Institute, Berlin; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Konig Gallery, London; Tick Tack Gallery, Antwerp; Marlborough, New York; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville; and Sevil Dolmaci Gallery, Istanbul. McQuilkin’s work has been reviewed in The New York Times, the Village Voice, FlashArt, Art Magazine and elsewhere. She received her MFA from New York University.