Tuesday, April 2, 2019

“Magic Ben Big Boy” at Matthew Marks


(link)

You can see what was already in the later work then, that endless turning from inside to outside, what is open and what is hidden. While ever more skeletally baroque now, the similar rotations then, into shyness then. A portal opens, a cork plugs, things are sealed, places buried. What happens inside these "Shirley Temple Rooms" is what's at stake, but the exhibition's "Ben" is a Michael Jackson song about a boy who love his rat, and the "Big Boy" is adult sized sexual assault trauma doll, and the "Magic" is some old crone with a box of roses, cats wideyed at their prey, Magic Ben the big boy, and our eyes the size of eggs, I'm sure you can put the story together.