Doreen Garner: The Observatory

Time Equities Inc. Art-in-Buildings is pleased to announce the newest exhibition at the West 10th Window: Doreen Garner, The Observatory.

Doreen Garner’s The Observatory fuses the sleek and sexy with the grotesque, mashing together organ-like forms compiled out of stuffed condoms and hair decorated with glistening crystals, glitter, and shiny petroleum jelly. Her created organic objects are bedecked ornaments of bodily behavior. Garner’s work examines society’s relationship to the black female body, transforming objects of decoration and pleasure into ghastly oozing masses that are at once anthropomorphic yet foreign in their unnaturalness.

The Observatory immerses Garner into the midst of this viscera. Referencing the history of Western powers relegating black women’s bodies as foreign objects to be observed, Garner constricts her nude body within a glass box filled with yellow and pink fibers and stuffed condoms. Slathered with petroleum jelly and glitter, Garner becomes a responsive component among the mound of oozing organ-like objects. The work references the history of Saartjie Baartman, or “the Hottentot Venus”, an African woman kidnapped and put on display in 19th century European circuses as a fetishized object of fascination. In The Observatory, Garner takes on this role. Daring the viewer to hold her gaze, Garner’s presence is an active confrontation of the viewer, challenging their participation or complicity in observing the artist as a specimen for study.

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Doreen Garner (b.1986) is a Brooklyn-based artist born in Philadelphia, PA. Select exhibitions include “Surrogate Skin: The Biology of Objects” MoCADA (2016), “Ether and Agony” Antenna Gallery NOLA (2016), “Removing the Veil: Vanity as Material for Incision” Essex Flowers (2016), “SHINY RED PUMPING” Vox Populi Gallery (2015), “Something I Can Feel” curated by Derrick Adams at Volta Art Fair (2016), and “Pussy Don’t Fail Me Now” Cindy Rucker Gallery (2015). Garner has recently completed residencies at LMCC Workspace Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Abrons Art Center. She holds a BFA in Glass from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA in Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design. Currently a 2016 Artist in Residence at Pioneerworks, Garner is practicing as a sculptor and inscriber of flesh.

Next up at the West 10th Window: Lauren Clay, Kirsten Hassenfeld, and Robbin Deyo.

For press inquiries please contact: Monique Peterson, QUINN | mpeterson@quinn.pr | 212.868.1900 x387

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The West 10th Street Window is curated by Eliana Blechman, Natalie Diaz, and Jennie Lamensdorf and is sponsored by the Time Equities Inc. (TEI) Art-in-Buildings Program. TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through the Art-in-Buildings Program, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.