Marilyn Minter
Salon 94 New York
November 12, 2006 - January 20, 2007
Salon 94 is proud to present our first solo exhibition of Marilyn Minter in New York. Marilyn Minter shows new large scale paintings rendered with her trademark technique of layering and modeling enamel on metal, alongside new photographs. Mudbath, a 10-foot long shoe fetish extravaganza, portrays a foot strapped in a bejeweled stiletto stepping into a dirty puddle. This image is taken directly from Minter’s billboard project- a mock advertisement cum public artwork featured in Chelsea last fall.
Another painting is Glazed; a blue eye caked in purple glitter and sweat. Crystal Swallow shows a pair of lips literally eating diamonds. Minter has, for the past 20 years, explored what she calls the “pathology of glamour,” or the painstaking everyday un- and re- doing of women’s physical appearance and their strive for perfection. Taking on the clichés of fashion photography she adds a dose of reality to them.
Closing in tight on her subjects, whether it is a shoe, an eye or a baby, she subverts the glamour of desire. The images Minter generates always stand on the border of photorealism and abstraction: on focusing on details she continually shoots her photographs at the moment before the image breaks out of focus. Lily Putti, her latest image of a baby in soft focus and heavenly light, recalls Caravaggio or Quattrocento pictures of the Madonna and Child.
Marilyn Minter was born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana. She has continually broken new ground in painting since her first solo exhibition at the Everson Museum, Syracuse in 1975. Recently, she has been featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and a one person show at the SFMOMA. Her first monograph, published by Gregory R Miller, with contributions from Johanna Burton, Mary Heilman and Matthew Higgs, will be out in February 2007.