Bethany Shorb, Supplemental Restraint System
Opening Friday, July 1st 7 - 10pm
On view until July 24th, 2011
Exhibition preview -
Detroit-based visual artist Bethany Shorb's "Supplemental Restraint System" is born from classic American and vintage European sports car parts harvested from wrecked vehicles. Her work is tightly wrapped in an outer skin made exclusively from previously deployed airbags, beaded and sutured back together forming another protective barrier in an imagined automotive crash narrative, then further fetishized in glass scientific vitrines. Also included in the show are neon and automotive emblem text assemblages as obsessive tropes on car-culture.
Schooled in both sculpture and photography, Bethany Shorb creates elaborate prop, costume and set constructions that blur the line between both editorial fashion photography and performance art documentation. Her most recent LANGUAGE PRIMER series investigates the ideas of gender ambiguity and cultural assimilation/disallowance of such—in the context of self and self-portraiture—showing it’s onion-skinned layers as sides of self through the exploration of gender identification and accepted societal gender roles. She examines how these established roles may change in the future through parallel comparison to rigid English language grammatical rules.
Referencing the literary work of futurist Donna Haraway to the classic androgynous fashion photography of Helmut Newton, she plays on the current tropes of hyper-overdriven image retouching/manipulating seen in fashion magazines and illustrates that a level of body plasticization can not only transcend skin, but gender, moving beyond the limitations of body, beyond gender and beyond the roles we’re bound to within them.
Her recent CRASH series refers to JG Ballard’s novel of the same name with scenes titled by the lyrics of The Normal’s song of similar influence. Technology, celebrity, sex, and death are perversely glamorized and fetishized in unison in a single explosion of red Swarovski crystals and inflated black latex rubber. Models, wardrobe and set decoration all retain the same visual and emotional weight, , a hyper-saturated amalgamation exploring the interstitial space between the alluring and repulsive; hedonism and restraint; the seductive speed of expressways and the still finality of Last Rights.
ATMOSPHERIC/PRESSURES further pushes the prop/installation/garment tension. In Shorb’s most recent work, the object once relegated to a simple set prop evolves into the finished work of art. Constructed exclusively from re-purposed vintage and deadstock materials,ATMOSPHERIC/PRESSURES is made almost entirely from surplus military meteorological balloons and tatted lace doilies. Each re-purposed material has been exposed to further surface treatment: hand-dying, painting and screen printing. The finished looks are augmented by period capelets and opera gloves that have also received similar surface transformation and embellishment.
Although both deconstructed objects do stem from the same Victorian to Cold War era time period, latex weather balloons and crocheted lace doilies may at first seem like disparate materials to combine into a single garment, but both materials have a single vital unifying purpose throughout history: Protection.
Rubber has traditionally been used in protective clothing. From raincoats, boots, gas masks, hazmat suits to condoms, it is meant to repel fluids and prove impermeable to corrosives and viral agents. Latex balloons have been used throughout military history for purposes of scientific observation, espionage, distributing propaganda and transporting munitions – all with the main purpose of protecting one’s territory while at war. From 1944-45 rubber balloons went on tactical offensive rather than simple reconnaissance missions. The Japanese sent over nine thousand of balloon bombs buoyant in the jetstream to the mainland United States. Hundreds of Fire Balloons were never found and still may pose a threat as unexploded ordnance. Shrouded in secrecy, they were one of the few attacks ever on North America.
Latex rubber is also prevalent as a fetishised fashion object among BDSMpractitioners, but has yet to be commonly used in couture and high fashion other than occasionally borrowing from and echoing the hyper-sexualized “second skin” or super hero aesthetic. Fetishists resist skin on skin contact, using the latex in a prophylactic like manner to protect, repel and transform the wearer into another persona. Here Shorb departs from recreating a caricature of a second skin, instead she isolates the body from the viewer through voluminous gather, ruffles and masses of goffered rubber “fabric.” Color, weight and texture of the natural latex also plays an important role in distancing ATMOSPHERIC/PRESSURES from typical fetish wear. Mottled dyed shades of ebony and coffee coupled with it’s natural amber and honey color belie it’s heritage in the dungeon, yet still offer the same protection from skin on skin contact. When stretched taught, it ironically looks far more like actual human skin – rarely is it ever seen matte and not polished to a reflective shine.
Along with their understood decorative purpose, tatted and crocheted doilies, neck ruffs (and laces as a whole) were used in a similar, utilitarian and protective manner, and are still a fetishised object today. Doilies and table runners isolate fine furniture from hot, droplet laden cookware as the interchangeable ruffled collars would protect the entirety of the garment from food spills and human sweat. Completing many of theATMOSPHERIC/PRESSURES looks, restrictive pilot’s caps and exaggerated dunce-like caps and veils echo traditional religious head coverings seen in Islamic traditions, Catholic flagellant Penitentes and Spanish peinetas. The openwork in the lace or tatted veil allows the underlying surface to show through, but not to be touched.
Bethany Shorb was born in Boston MA in 1976. She received her Masters of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture, with an elective in Photography, from Cranbrook Academy of Art and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Boston University with minors in Art History and Photography. Her photography and product design work have been widely published in the United States and abroad; her visual art has been exhibited throughout the United States and is included in numerous private collections.
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