“And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial?”
—Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924)
Monaco is pleased to present 'Animal Fancy,' a solo exhibition by Cole Lu.
Cole Lu presents six new works that reformulate folkloric tales and myths of monstrosity, and assert an alternative exile from a queer, autobiographical perspective.
In Western folklore, the monster has often been used to delineate social acceptability. As a result, they have become estranged, dispossessed, misunderstood, and feared – eternally othered. Lu adopts the Beast’s form in her work, both empathizing and identifying with its plight. Confronting her own experiences of destabilization and alienation in her series of bas-relief, Lu sees the body as a home for language, where it lives under the skin in several forms. The reliefs are carefully sculpted and cast into silicone, concrete, metal, aqua resin, fiberglass, and flock. The cast concrete Beast’s head is amputated and illusionistically submerged into the floor. Applied morphology in a visual grammatical sense, like a house breaking into flesh, Lu employs the labor of materials as language—producing, creating, and interpreting them to weld together a consolidated form. Collectively, the work is speculative, and at times satirical, while upholding the popular and conceited Western gaze that summons its operators. It folds an interior space where a fiction lies in the narrative of queerness, illness, and seclusion.
Cole Lu (b. Taipei) is an artist, curator, and writer based in New York. She was the former assistant director of fort gondo compound for the arts in St. Louis (May 2014- Jan 2017). Her work has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum and Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis), the Institute of Contemporary Art and Vox Populi (Philadelphia), The Wrong Biennale(URL & São Paulo), LACE (Los Angeles), I Never Read (Basel), FILE (São Paulo), K-Gold Temporary Gallery (Lesvos), and Trestle Projects (Brooklyn). Her publication Smells Like Content (Endless Editions) is in the artists’ book collection of the MoMA Library (New York). Her recent two-person exhibition “While Removing the Garbage or Paying the Cleaner” opens at American Medium (New York) in May 2018, and her writing will be featured in the CODETTE JOURNAL #3 (June 2018).
Check our collection of arts related events happening around St. Louis.
WE’RE BAAAAACK!!!
Much like the poltergeist from the feature film Poltergeist 2, in person events are back! Because scheduling is scary enough, Silver Space is here to help. Behold, our virtual baby - The Events Calendar - revived by popular demand. Here you can find out when the next gallery opening is, where you can hear free artist talks, and even what you missed out on because you didn’t check the calendar like you should have in the first place. Shame!
If you have an exhibition, event, artist talk, opening, or something tangentially associated, email marinam@silverspacestl.com and we’ll do our best to get you on!
ALINGERING NOTE: in-person gatherings during covid
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