San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Of constellations and Cheez Doodles
Exhibit at McNay features five female contemporary artists who push limits
A tiny infinity room filled with polka-dotted pumpkins and a chilly landscape where the snowflakes have eyes are just two of the highlights of “Limitless!
Five Women Reshape Contemporary Art.”
The McNay Art Museum’s newest exhibition holds engaging works by Yayoi Kusama, Sandy Skoglund, Jennifer Steinkamp, Leticia Huckaby and Martine Gutierrez.
Rich Aste, the museum’s director and CEO, described the show as “a moment of escape, of awe, of a lot of fun and also inspiration.”
The exhibit marks the second time the museum has shown one of Kusama’s famed mirrored infinity rooms. The first was part of the 2018 exhibit “Immersed: Local to Global Art Sensations.” That one, titled “Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity,” surrounded those who entered with hundreds of small lights, creating a sense of stepping into a constellation.
This time around, the museum is showing “All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins,” in which those who step inside are thrust into a seemingly endless array of fanciful gourds.
“For people who saw the first one, there’s a similarity, but the experience is different,” said curator René Paul Barilleaux. “The first one was more about the sublime, and this one is more playful, fun, and relatable.”
Visitors will be able to enter the room two at a time for 45 seconds. A museum staffer will be on hand to open and close the door, and the room will be sanitized frequently.
The exhibit includes another piece with proven appeal: Skoglund’s “The Cocktail Party.” The 1992 installation depicts a party scene in which every sur
face — the walls, the furniture, the lamp, the partygoers’ flesh — is covered with Cheez Doodles.
Individual segments of the work have been exhibited fairly often over the years, but this is just the third time since the McNay acquired the piece in 2009 that it has been shown in its entirety.
“It’s always a crowdpleaser,” Barilleaux said. “It’s very seductive, but at the same time, it’s a little macabre and a little offputting.”
That description could also be used for “Winter,” a 2020 installation by Skoglund that also is in the show. It invites visitors to immerse themselves into a beautiful but unsettling winter landscape including scowling owls and oversized snowflakes with eyes in the center.
Skoglund responded to questions about both pieces via email. Here’s what she had to say:
Can you talk a little about “The Cocktail Party”?
Looking for an unworthy, unlikely source of inspiration back in 1992, my attention fell on the bright colors and fanciful shapes of snack food. I immediately saw an animated quality to the tubular strips of Cheez Doodles. Combined with the bright orange color, the Cheez Doodles took on the life of caterpillars, especially when combined
together. … They are an example, among many, of the manipulation of nature by human beings.
Working with the Cheez Doodles was deliberately unsettling. We used hot glue to stick the doodles onto surfaces, which made the studio smell like a grilled cheese sandwich. I invented Cheez Doodle drying racks to hold the individual Doodles in an assembly line while they were coated with epoxy resin. It was intricate studio work that required a lot of visual talent to skillfully place the shapes against each other.
I see “The Cocktail Party” as both a parade and a masquerade, a reflection on human behavior in the tradition of James Ensor, the expressionist painter. I hope the
viewer feels a jolt of recognition when looking at the piece.
Can you talk about “Winter”?
“Winter” is a recent installation and photograph from 2018 that took me 10 years to complete. As with much of my work, it deals with the recognition of the human being in an overwhelming environment that is both scary and beautiful.
On the wall of crumpled, painted photo foil are vague images of eyes intersected by radiating lines of starry snowflakes: creeping global surveillance or the gaze of the universe back at us. The owls are asking: Who is looking at whom? The perceived scowl on their face is just a natural characteristic, but we can’t
help feeling something.
The installation is an immersive experience, open to the viewer to walk within and feel it from the inside out.
You feature animals fairly often in your work. What draws you to a particular creature?
My interest in animals goes back to my childhood, when cartoons with animals were as engrossing as daily life. The gaze of an animal is not empty. There is another world that they are experiencing, and it is fascinating and beyond reach. Sculpting animals gives me the opportunity to see the world in a different way. It is healing and magical.